Spring Greens and God's Green Tonic: Medicine for Body and Soul

A day or so ago I wandered around our hillside below our balcony and gathered many new and flourishing spring greens. There were three or four great growths of wintercress (barbaria vulgaris), also known in the south as creasy greens. I found numerous dandelions, not yet flowered (and thus not as bitter as they get later in the season), mats and mats of chickweed, wild chives and wild onions. There's also a whole slew of plants I haven't yet identified, so I don't know if they are edible or not. I gathered up about 3 of my plastic grocery bags worth and started grinning. I remember a post just like this one about a year ago. . . yup. Here it is. This hillside of ours is very fertile for foraging. I have to remember to ask that it NOT get weed-wacked. My neighbor is an industrious type and half the time I'm about to go harvest a ton of red clover flowers and BAM, he's out there weed-wacking them. Ah well. Have to do better this year.

Our elderly neighbor Fred broke his leg back in January and has been in and out of hospitals and nursing homes since. We brought him home last Saturday, where he gets around in his wheelchair, waiting for his leg to heal enough for him to walk again. He's one of those tough, wiry guys who is basically healthy as a horse but for his fragile bones and the rheumatoid arthritis. He's never taken pharmaceuticals, or rarely. It's funny when docs or other medics first talk to him. They always ask him what medications he's on and he always says "none." He does take nutritional supplements, but no drugs. Compare this to many elderly folks who take umpteen meds every day from killer statin drugs to blood pressure meds to this and that and then this one to combat the side effects of the others.... Anyway, Fred.

I put all the dandelion greens, some of the creasy greens, a bunch of the chickweed and a lot of wild onions and chives into a big pot of cold water with a couple of onions, some heads of garlic that were going soft and time to toss 'em, some cayenne pepper, a tablespoon or two of apple cider vinegar and set it to boil. Once it got a hard boil going, I turned it to simmer for an hour or so. The cider vinegar will help extract all the rich vitamins and minerals from the veggies into the broth. To finish it before straining, I added a tablespoon of some powdered garlic and onion and herbs that I'd made a while back from veggies and herbs I dried. Not bad, if I say so myself. This is a powerful spring tonic, this broth.

Vitamins and minerals in dandelions: beta carotene (more than is in carrots), calcium, iron, vitamins B1, B2, B5, B6, B12, C, E, P, D and biotin, inositol, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium and zinc. And lots of all of those. Plus, in this broth, it's tasty and easily absorbed in the body. It'll do wonders for Fred. Wintercress is also highly nutritious and at this early stage in spring, quite tasty. Later it gets bitter as hell, and to some, it'll be too bitter even now, but not for me or Fred. We know that bitter is medicine for soul and body. You can see a good picture of wintercress here. Once you find this plant and ID it, you'll notice it every spring from now on. My eyes simply know now to look for it in early spring. The bright green lobes of the leaves will catch your peripheral vision easily.

I got three quarts of the broth--good for a start! Tonight I'll cook up the mess of creasy greens with some onion and bacon, and the chickweed, bless its soul, is going to be salad with some red onion and hard boiled eggs. This is fine eating, and free!

Do make some vitamin rich broth for your family. This is easy, simple to do, and your body will much appreciate its cleansing and healing properties.

Onwards,

HM

"Our Vanishing Landscape"

This is just a few meandering thoughts. There's a conservation organization in a city near us. You don't need to know the name--but you know the type, the kind that asks for donations of land for them to hold in perpetituity in order to escape the dread evil of "our vanishing landscape." That line has always made me laugh--WHAT vanishing landscape? Hell, I live out in the sticks and we got veritable TONS of landscape and as far as I can tell, it is all still there. So, like, what's the problem?

I mean, it sounds like you'd be driving along, and all of a sudden, you wouldn't see fields or farms or woods or trees, you'd just see gray blank walls of nothingness. Right? The landscape would have "vanished." That's what makes me laugh.

I'm poking fun at this silly environmentalist thinking, of course. And I have to say, it seems to me that most "environmentalists," especially those who consider themselves tree-huggers, that they all live in cities. They see sidewalks, streets, buildings--in other words, lots and lots of cement. And that apparently causes a bit of brain dysfunction, because they will believe things like "our landscape is vanishing." They also probably have no idea exactly how much work it takes to maintain cement, to restrain rampant vegetation from simply taking over.

Because, folks, it WILL. All you have to do is STOP all maintainence work on roads, highways, bridges, etc. and pretty soon the whole damn mess of it will simply disappear from view. All you will see is a plethora of, well, "landscape." Vines, trees, loads of my buddies, the weeds, grasses, you name it. Vegetation alone will easily overcome anything we might call a city. Just look at those ruins of cities and temples in South America, easily returned to the jungle by victorious landscape.

If you live out in the country, you've seen dandelions poking their bright, yellow heads right up through pavement on a back country road. In the cities, you see dandelions poking out through cracks in the sidewalk. Of course you have, if you're alert. There's your landscape returning, folks. And if you're a city environmentalist, come out into the country. Hell, we'll be happy to show you that landscape ain't disappearing nohow. It'll rule in the end.

Well, OK. I AM thinking about the "national emergency" Obama just declared to handle the not-a-big-deal-government-produced-and-directed swine flu. And that's bad news. But I can't think about bad news all the time. That's my husband's department. But crisis or no crisis, world-ending or no world-ending, dinner still has to get to the table somehow, and since the sun is shining and it is a beautiful October day, I'd rather be grateful and cheerful, and nothing cheers me up more than to think about dandelions taking over the world after us damn-silly human beings have done ourselves to dirt.

Dandelions Uber Alles!

HM

Other Uses for Dandelions

Make a rubber band from dandelion sap? Think I'm crazy? Need proof? Read this. :)

Harvesting the Hillside: Wild Onions and Dandelions

(wild onions)


It's a lovely day and I decided to put off housework once again and head out and do some foraging. I noticed that the hillside under our balconey going down to the road is plumb full of dandelions and wild onions. I brought my digger tool and my clippers and set to work. Digging up the wild onions wasn't a problem and I got a bag of them. And I dug up loads of dandelions as well, roots and leaves. Well, as much of the root as I could get.



I foraged for about an hour. The real work starts when I got everything home. Every thing needs to be washed. The dandelions went into a 5 gallon bucket that I half filled with water. This is for their first cleaning, mainly to get all the mud off. The wild onions went into a big pot of water in the kitchen. I let everything soak for a while and got my cutting board, knives, and colander ready.



The wild onions didn't take too long to process--just wash them and cut them up, ready for use. I got about 3 cups worth. They'll be used in a lot of dishes I'll be making. I chopped them up into little bits for adding to casseroles, soups, rice dishes, whatever. I love onions and they are very good for you. You can read more about wild onions at the Wild Food Foragers site, here. If you want, you can also freeze them: just put the chopped up bits in a ziplock bag and plunk them in the freezer.

Once I was done with the onions, I next washed all the roots of the dandelions out in the bucket, scrubbing them with a little brush I have for that purpose. The cats found this a very interesting procedure and watched carefully. July kitten snatched a dandelion from the ones I was washing and took it off to investigate more thoroughly.

The next step was to separate all the parts I would be using. I cut the roots from the plants, then took off any flower buds (these are small and round, don't use the bigger ones that are beginning to elongate to become a flower). Finally I cut the leaves from the crown of the plant, putting all the leaves into a big pot to be washed again. The buds can be used as a vegetable on their own or in other recipes. The leaves can be sauted, steamed, or if they are too bitter for you, boiled in some changes of water. Unfortunately, if you do that, you will lose a lot of the vitamin content when you toss out the water. It is worthwhile to try to cultivate a taste for a slight bitterness. Nutrition scientists are finding that sour and bitter tasting plants are more protective against disease. Read more about bitter herbs at Prodigal Gardens.

Finally, the roots are chopped and put on the drying shelf on my windowsill. These will be used for tea. Or, you can roast them and use as a coffee substitute. I also make a roots extract with dandelion, yellow dock and burdock roots. I like wine, but I love my liver, so I take this extract daily. A friend with non-symptomatic hepatitis C also uses the extract with good results (he gets his liver enzymes checked regularly I guess).

The leaves are then chopped and put in a big plastic bag in the fridge for use throughout the week. I'll probably saute a bunch of them tonight with some of the wild onion and some carrot in olive oil and a bit of soy sauce.

Since I've not eaten the buds before, I'll either saute them in butter or boil them lightly in salted water.

So, foraging outside took me about an hour, maybe a little longer. The processing took about 2 hours. It is more work than you'd think, but foraging for wild foods is a great way to get more nutritious food and medicine. I love the process, myself. You just can't beat free, healthy food.

You all know how good dandelions are for you, don't you? If not, then read more about dandelions here and here. They are one of the most highly nutritious veggies on the planet. Needless to say, don't harvest them from lawns that have been sprayed with chemicals. They grow wild worldwide, nearly everywhere. God's gift, they are!
HM

Early Spring Foraging

Two days ago it was a lovely day--sun shining, warm with just a hint of crispy chill in the air. I headed down to the garden to see what might be coming up. A lot of the weeds I look for grow in disturbed areas--such as our big garden plot. It needs to be plowed again to get it ready for planting in May, but right now it is covered with dead weeds and the old vines and stalks of last summer's tomatoes and corn.

I found wild onions all over the place--in the garden, on various hillsides, back in the woods; this valley is full of them. I harvested a big bag of them. This takes some digging down to loosen all the roots, then brushing off as much dirt from them as possible. I found yellow dock growing too, although it doesn't have that lovely sour citrusy flavor just yet. I dug up the complete plants and got both the leaves and the roots. I want to make more yellow dock root tincture, which is very good for the liver.

Wintercress (barbaria vulgaris) was also present. This is a member of the mustard family and it is an early spring green. Down south it is avidly harvested and eaten as "creasy greens." That's a wintercress leaf you see at the top of this blog. The leaves are a dark, glossy green. It grows in a basal rosette and later it will send up a center stalk to flower, a pretty yellow flower. When you see a field simply glowing with yellow a little later in the spring, that's probably wintercress. It's a bitter green, but this early, it isn't too bitter. I got a big bag of these as well. Free food! And very nutritious food as well. There's a good description of wintercress at Prodigal Gardens, in the Herbwalk section for March.

Here's a bit more info on wintercress from Mother Earth News:

Winter cress—a mustard—is rich in vitamins and has a slightly peppery flavor that goes well in mixed salads. The young winter leaves are also excellent shredded, flavored with chopped green onion, vinegar, salt, and sugar, and topped with minced bacon (drippings and all). Later in spring the greens take on a bitterness which can be removed by boiling in two waters. When the bloom develops, the leaves become too bitter to eat . . . but the buds can be cooked briefly—no more than 5 minutes overall—in two waters and served like the broccoli they resemble. Lemon butter and Hollandaise sauce are good additions to this wild vegetable.

I plan on harvesting more of the wintercress while it is in it's not to bitter stage. In a few weeks, it will be too bitter even for me. When I got home, I rinsed the wintercress three times in a big pot of water, then cooked it only in the water that remained on this leaves, thus steaming it more or less. I greatly enjoyed mine, but Michael didn't care for it as much. He loves lambsquarters, as do I, but not all greens are a delicious as lambsquarters. I'll eat it and use it in casseroles and slip a few raw leaves into salads.

I also harvested a few early dandelions, roots, leaves and all. Dandelions are not bitter at this stage, in early spring before they flowers. So it is a great time to get all that you can find as dandelions are very nutritious. Here's what Wildman Steve Brill has to say about dandelion leaves:

The leaves are more nutritious than anything you can buy. They're higher in beta carotene than carrots. The iron and calcium content is phenomenal, greater than spinach. You also get vitamins B1, B2, B5, B6, B12, C, E, P, and D, biotin, inositol, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, and zinc by using a tasty, free vegetable that grows on virutally every lawn. The root contains the sugar inulin, plus many medicinal substances.

And here's what Euell Gibbons, master forager, has to say:

"Ridiculous as it sounds, we might be better off nutritionally if we threw away the crops that we so laboriously raise in our fields and gardens and ate the weeds that grow with no encouragement from us—indeed they grow despite all our strenuous efforts to eradicate them.”

“We spend millions on herbicides to kill the dandelions in our lawns, while we pay millions more for diet supplements to give ourselves the vitamins and minerals that dandelion could easily furnish.” Euell Gibbons in his essay on Just How Good Are Wild Foods?

So we ate the wintercress for dinner that night. The next day I put all the wild onions, curly dock leaves and dandelions in a big pot of water, added some dried cayenne peppers and lots of chopped garlic, and simmered it for an hour or so. This makes a wonderful spring tonic broth. Oh, I did add an organic, vegetarian boullion cube for a bit more flavor. This broth I will either use as a soup base, or I'll just drink it warm or cold. I'll give some to a couple of older folks here who could probably use some extra rich nutrition that the broth will supply.

It is still too early here for many of the plants I love, such as plantain. But it'll be coming up soon. I'm planning on harvesting as much wild food as I can--it'll help our food budget, and we'll get a nutritional boost as well. You can't beat that!

HM

Dandelion Wine

As y'all have probably figured out, I'm a lazy bloggista who doesn't do pictures of my own, I merely steal them from a google images search. Nevertheless, this is pretty much what my dandelion wine looked like as it went through its fermenting and holding stages.

Dandelion wine is something you make as soon as the dandelions blossom, sometime in early May. And last May, I harvested bags and bags of the blossoms from various fields and lawns and wherever I found them, as long as they weren't sprayed with chemicals. At that time, I was focused on the blossoms, as I wanted to make dandeldion wine, but this coming May, I'll be getting greens and roots as well as blossoms at all the same time. I'm awfully hungry for wild greens here in gray, cold January and I could have frozen lots more than I did.

The bags and bags of blossoms became dandelion wine. This was the first time I'd made it, so I used a recipe which I got at Jack Keller's winemaking page. There you can find a wine recipe for anything, and I do mean anything: cabbage wine, beet and parsnip wine, basketball wine, chickweed wine. You name a fruit, vegetable, herb or any plant known to mankind and Jack Keller probably has a recipe for wine for it. Amazing. Who would've thought? Just kidding about the basketball wine, though. :) I'm planning on making lots more wines next year. Since it was my first time, I wanted to see if it worked first. And did it work!

The recipe said the wine must age for six months, and so I made it, let it ferment, finally tightened the cap at some point and put it away and forgot I even had it. Til yesterday, when I nearly stumbled over it. I picked up the big ol gallon jug, cleaned it off in the sink (it was dusty), and poured a glass. Wow. A very pretty golden-yellow liquour flowed into my wine glass.

And it was tasty, rather more sweet than I'm usually inclined to, and more potent than I thought too. I had a few glasses by the time the day was done and I had definitely drank more than I should have. It was delicious, with a tiny dandelionish bitterness underneath that I enjoyed.

The wine-making process isn't difficult with this kind of wine. I didn't have the fermentation airlock thing, so I just put cheesecloth over the top of the bottle and only put on the cap and tightened it when it was done fermenting. Nor did I rebottle it, I just left it in its jug.

Alcohol is one of the traditional means of preserving food. And rather than spend a lot of money on weed-killer, just pick those dandelion blossoms and make wine with them. You'll be glad you did, as it is excellent in mid-winter, a fine reminder of pretty spring days when everything is greening and blossoming. Man, I can't wait!

HM

Diggin' Roots: Burdock, Yellow Dock, Dandelion, Sassafrass

I've been digging roots, as many as I can find. And here's a confession of a beginning forager: It simply didn't occur to me to mark plants whose roots I wanted to dig. See, you are supposed to dig the roots after the plants have died down; however, when the plants have died down, I can no longer find the plants! Isn't this the dumbest thing? Why didn't I think to mark exactly where those evening primroses were? Or the jerusalem artichokes? Jeez. Well, next year.

What you see top left is a first year burdock, the basal rosette. It is the first year roots you want. The plant is a biennial and will grow again next year, sending up a large flower stalk. These plants get HUGE. Here's a picture of a second year plant.

He's a big guy, ain't he? Anyway, I've been spending hours here and there digging roots. It is not like picking up a head of lettuce at the store. Foraging is work, good hard work, enough to lessen my guilt for not taking up Shy Wolf's exercise routine. :) And after you get your roots home, then it is another hours of time cleaning the roots and chopping them up. That, of course, is when my back spasms and goldenrod oil is called for.

I find the burdock all over the place. There's some in the garden, some at a neighbor's house when I went over to bring him some garlic syrup and elderberry extract (first cold/flu of the season), and some by a roadside. They are handsome, virile plants--I tend to think of them in masculine terms, apparently.

The first year roots are both edible and medicinal. Burdock is a capital blood-purifier, containing lots of minerals and trace minerals. It is a good and gentle detoxifier, and will strengthen the body. Check out its nutritional value here, and be sure and scroll down the page.

Prodigal Gardens has a nice section on burdock, complete with recipes. I want to eat some of what I gathered and save the rest for an extract. I've already eaten a couple of the root slices and found them tasty, if a bit woody.

I've already discussed yellow dock and dandelion, so I won't get into them here. Besides eating the greens, the dandelion roots can also be eaten (yellow dock roots are too bitter), but I think I'll be using these as teas and extracts. It is easy to tell the yellow dock root from the dandelion--the yellow dock roots are intensely yellow, and dandelion roots are whitish and sweeter. I picked them both at the same time, but had no trouble telling which roots were which.

There's a veritable host of little sassafrass saplings to the side of our garden, so I tried digging up a bunch of them. Digging tree roots is a lot harder than the other plants mentioned here. Yowsa. I guess I'd better start getting in better shape to dig these fellas. I did get three good size roots, though, and shaved off the bark to use for sassafrass tea. The shaved roots went into a pot with about a quart and a half of water, boiled for 10 minutes. The tea became a bright, handsome red and smelled terrific. I know that the FDA has banned safrole, the essential ingredient in sassafrass root and bark, reporting that it can cause liver damage and perhaps cause cancer. Well, maybe so, but a few cups of delicious sassafrass tea probably won't hurt.

Besides, I tend not to believe the FDA, since I don't think it is a good idea to trust an agency that has lied to me before on many things. The FDA likes pharmaceuticals (as in, they know where the money is), and I like plants and herbs. Both pharmaceuticals and plants can kill you and make you sick, but except for the rare poisonous plants, plants and herbs are far better for you than the chemical stews of Big Pharma. Just my 2 cents worth.

I also took the sassafrass leaves to dry. Dried and powered, they can be used to thicken stews and gumbos, and probably used for tea as well.

Onwards,

HM

Spring Greens in the Fall?

Yesterday I went out to the fields and the garden to harvest some "spring" greens. Dandelion, curly dock, woods sorrel, plantain and some leaves from my neighbor's herbs, rosemary, sage, dill and thyme all went into the harvest bag. Yes, this time of year you might well find some young curly dock, often growing not far from some older dock plants that have already gone to seed. Dandelions too lose their bitterness this time of year and the greens become palatable again. The plantain is looking lush and tasting really green and fresh and there's wood sorrel to add some lemony bite to the mix.

These greens are common in the spring, and to my delight, common in the fall here too! So I loaded up a big bag full of them, brought them home, cleaned off the dirt, and cut them up. They will either go in salads, or as potherbs, or in various casseroles. It is incredibly useful to have a bag of free greens--full of vital nutritious vitamins and minerals--in the fridge, ready to hand. Rather than taking some multivitamin/mineral tab made by some industrial pill-producer somewhere out of who knows what chemicals cooked up in a lab, try gathering your greens. I'm hoping I can do this right up until it snows or the greens start to disappear or start tasting weird or bitter. If I'm hard up for something nutritious, I'll use them even if they are bitter. I can always infuse them or boil them for a bit and then drink the water since it'll have most of the vitamins.

Here's some information on each of these vital herbs.

Dandelion

The link there will take you to Botanical's pages and pages of info on this incredible plant. It grows worldwide, is recognizable to everyone, and is one of the better greens around. Taste-wise, it is flavorful in spring and in the fall. In the summer, the leaves get bitter to protect the plant while it is busy reproducing itself, which is does extremely well. This time of year, in the fall, is the time to dig the roots as well as get the greens. If you are serious about adding to your family's stores of nutrition, read up on all the wonderful things dandelions can do for you. It is a very useful plant--you can make dandelion wine from the blossoms, you can eat the greens, or make a tincture or tea from them, and the roots are a storehouse of other vital properties. Botanical's exegesis on the dandelion is a great start--it even has some recipes for the teas and tinctures. However there's lots more out there. This herbalist, for instance, swears by her dandelion oil (made by infusing olive oil with dandelion blossoms) for achy muscles. As someone with a bad shoulder and near constant neck and shoulder pain, I'm just waiting for those springtime blossoms to come 'round again! In the meantime, though, I'll be gratefully using this powerful plant and thanking God for this not-so-hidden manna!

This concept of manna--the wild foods all around us, but unseen by most people--belongs to my friends Ra and Morgan. I'll see if I can get them to write something as a guest post here about it. I found it quite intriquing...

Curly (Yellow, Sour) Dock

You can find some good pix of this plant here and here. These pictures show what young curly dock plants look like--as they get older, they put up a large flower stalk, which turns reddish in the fall. But the pictures at Prodigal Gardens show what the curly dock is looking like now--the young plants I'm picking leaves from. I'm also digging the roots, but from the older plants with the flower stalk. The leaves of rumex crispus are sour, lemony, a taste I like, but one my husband finds too bitter. The bitterness if probably the oxalic acid--which in large quantities may not be good for you. In moderation, however . . . delicious! I do want to try to ferment some more greens, and so I may use a portion of the bagful in the fridge for that. If I do, I'll describe the process for you in another post.

Here is an excellent article on the medicinal properties of curly dock root. Very beneficial for cleansing the lymphatic system, and cleaning and building the blood. All in all, curly dock is a good plant to know. Especially if it can be available both spring and fall!

Woods Sorrel

The link in the title here leads to a neat cooking with sorrel article, including recipes. Fun stuff! Woods sorrel is high in Vitamin C, and another tart, lemony-sour flavored herb. While too much of this herb would be overwhelming, except perhaps in soups and sauces, I think a bit of it in a mix of other greens in potherbs or salads would be wonderful. I don't much like taking pills, so eating my vitamins in their natural forms is well, a natural for me.

Hmmmm. While as a forager, I'm glad to find curly dock and woods sorrel in the fields around and in the garden, as a gardener, I'm not so happy. Both of these plants are a sign that the garden soil needs improving, needs strengthened and sweetened. Nothing a bunch of dead fish and aged horse manure couldn't handle... and we'll be putting those into the garden shortly. Maybe next year I'll have to go farther afield to find my dock and sorrel.

Common Plantain

Pretty much a miracle plant, in terms of its actions on all kinds of skin disorders, itches, scrapes, bug bites, and used internally it is a good detoxifier. But up til now I haven't really eaten much of it. My readings told me that it gets too fibrous to really eat, unless you get rid of the fibers, a time-consuming task. But early in the spring, and maybe later in the fall, well, we'll see! It is mild-tasting plant, and thus will go well with the dock and sorrel. I'll let you know what I think about plantain as an edible in a future post. For now, let me say it looked very fresh, lush and inviting--a hint to me to give it a try? I'm curious...so stay tuned.

HM

What's Happening?

First of all, a brief apology for not having posted in quite a while. It's a beautiful fall here in southern Indiana and I've been outside in the glory of it all, foraging and harvesting. Gathering plants, berries, roots, etc. takes time, but one is definitely rewarded richly for the effort. And it is harvest time in the fall.






This is the best time of year to gather roots--dandelion, burdock, yellow dock root, and any of the other roots available. This time of year, the plants are getting ready for winter and they send their energies to their roots. So I've been getting roots. Went to the words with a friend to gather some yellow root (goldenseal). It is still lush here, though I understand the plant is becoming endangered due to over-gathering. Mostly for money--this herb is hard to cultivate and domesticate, so a lot of goldenseal is wild-harvested. Both my friend and I gathered enough for our personal use--his wife was ill and needed some goldenseal to boost her immune system, and I wanted enough to make an extract for our use this winter. That's a picture of the plant to the left. I cleaned the roots, then cut them up and put them in a jar and poured vodka over them. I'll leave the extract alone for 6 weeks, shaking it now and then. That will be our immune-booster this winter.


I've also been digging dandelion root, burdock root and yellow (curly, sour) dock roots. The yellow dock root will become an extract. The dandelion and burdock roots will either become extracts or dried and saved for teas this winter. I've discovered I really like dandelion root tea, and it is wonderful for a sluggish liver and a host of other winter blah sorts of minor malaises.


These will become our medicines this winter, along with the elderberry extract and syrup, the garlic syrup, and whatever else I can forage, find, cook up. A friend of ours had been feeling sickly, so I told him he'd better get well or I'll be sending him homebrew concoctions whose taste alone will scare him well. :)


There's lots more to write about, but this will have to do for today. I'll be back with more, though. Promise.

HM

Liquid Vitamin C: Dandelion Greens and Pine Needle Tea

(Dandelion pix from www.foragingpictures.com, a companion site to Wildman Steve Brill's foraging page.)

Urf. I've been feeling pretty lousy the past couple of days. No energy, an excess of mucus in my system (most of it in my nose), tired, achy feeling, like a bad allergy time or starting a cold.

Yesterday I ate a bunch of garlic--good antibiotic properties and kicks the immune system into line. Since I was peeling garlic cloves anyway, and had a good store of garlic and had just seen a recipe for garlic syrup in a book called Healing Teas: How to Prepare and Use Teas to Maximize Your Health by Marie Nadine Antol, I decided to make garlic syrup. Here's the recipe from the book

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Garlic Syrup

Garlic does "brew" into a quite marvelous syrup. The effectiveness of this natural medicine is so powerful, that it simply had to be included here in some form. Accordingly, here's a very old recipe for Garlic Syrup.

1 pound peeled and crushed garlic cloves [I used a half pound plus a few other heads]

apple cider vinegar

pure water

1 cup glycerine (available at pharmacies)

1 cup honey

1. Put the peeled and crushed garlic cloves in a wide-mouthed 2 quart jar [I used my 1 qt jar]

Add equal parts apple cider vinegar and pure water until the jar is 3/4 full. Cap the jar loosely and let the mixture stand in a warm place for 4 days. Shake the jar several times a day.

2. Add the glycerine. Shake to blend. Allow the mixture to stand in a warm place for 1 more day, shaking several times.

3. Strain the mixture through cheesecloth or muslin, squeezing to remove all the exhausted bits of garlic. Return the mixture to the jar. Add the honey and stir until thoroughly mixed. Store the garlic syrup in a cool, dry place.

Great-grandmother's directions:

For coughs, colds, sore throats, bronchial congestion, high or low blood pressure, heart weakness or nervous disorders, take 1 tablespoon of the syrup 3 times a day before meals.

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It'll be ready in a few days. Can't wait to try this!

Since I have a tough time taking pills, I wanted to boost my immune system further by taking echinacea and goldenseal and Vitamin C with rose hips. But I keep gagging on the the Vitamin C tabs. So I went out and gathered dandelion leaves and pine needles. The power guys had been by yesterday cutting off tree limbs to keep the power lines clear, and there were many white pine boughs just lying there for me to use. The dandelion grows all over the place on the lawns by our pond, which are not sprayed with anything. I boiled water, added the dandelion leaves and pine needles, adding a handful of lemon balm for flavor, and let it steep for half and hour.

I expected my tea to be quite bitter, as dandelion leaves are bitter until the first fall frost, or so I had read, but it isn't bitter at all! It tastes good--piney and rich.

Both dandelion leaves and pine needles are rich in Vitamin C. Dandelion greens also have Vitamin A, Potassium, Phosphorus, calcium, thiamin, riboflavin and niacin. Check out their nutritional portrait here. Liquid vitamin C tea!

So if the SHTF, and you can't buy your vitamins, remember where those vitamins came from in the first place: green plants. Gather up a bunch of vitamin C rich plants and brew yourself a quart or two of tea. In my opinion, it is far better to get your vitamins and minerals from a plant source than from a pill anyway--you get the benefit of the synergy of the whole plant thataway.

Making your own medicines doesn't have to be hard or complex. Just go out for a walk and make friends with your common weeds.

Hopefully, this cold/bug/whatever will leave me in a day or so. I can't abide feeling sick.

Onwards, the only direction there is,

Handmaiden