I heart Jamie Oliver!

Ok. Wow. Seriously. I am totally lining up for some of this dude's (100% natural, not from concentrate, sugar free) Kool aid.


Jamie's wish:

"I wish for everyone to help create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire the family to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity."

I heart Paul Bergner!

It's things like this that make me so crazy, head over heels, bust my heart wide open, in love with herbalism.

"Paul Bergner is the director of the North American Institute of Medical Herbalism, editor of the Medical Herbalism Journal, creator of MedHerb.com, author of many herbal books including The Healing Power of Minerals, Special Nutrients and Trace Elements, The Healing Power of Echinacea and Goldenseal, The Healing Power of Ginseng and the Tonic Herbs, and The Healing Power of Garlic. He teaches herbal vitalism and in this podcast Paul lays a wonderful foundation for learning about herbs as he gets to the heart of herbal medicine…nature."

This might be a little woo woo for some people, and the interview is quite long, but if you have any interest at all in plants, ecology and healing, I do encourage you to set aside some time, make yourself nice and comfortable and have a listen. You'll be glad you did. Some parts of it are just so beautiful and lovely.

I listened to it yesterday afternoon while doing restorative yoga. I banged my kneecap real good getting out of bed in the morning and it was sore and swollen. It was my bad knee too, that I've dislocated 3 or 4 times in the past, and complains bitterly when I overuse it or don't give it the TLC it needs, so a gentle yoga practice was the order of the day, and this interview playing in the background was too perfect.

Paul Bergner tells a story about the regenerative power of nature that left me in absolute awe and totally filled to the brim with hope and joy. (It starts at approximately the 27:25 mark if you want to jump right to it.) Heck, I think I've been friggin' transformed by it!

Too much? Think I'm going overboard a little? Possibly. I am totally nuts about plants and nature. But have a listen and see for yourself!

And my knee? After the yoga, I massaged a combination of comfrey root and leaf oil, and comfrey root and Solomon's seal liniment into it a few times last night and this morning it's right as rain! Well, except that sometimes rain makes my knee ache, so that's maybe not the best analogy, but you get the idea.

Wordless Wednesday: Inside and Out

Our Daily Bread

I rented this movie Our Daily Bread.

"Welcome to the world of industrial food production and high-tech farming! To the rhythm of conveyor belts and immense machines, the film looks without commenting into the places where food is produced in Europe: monumental spaces, surreal landscapes and bizarre sounds - a cool, industrial environment which leaves little space for individualism. People, animals, crops and machines play a supporting role in the logistics of this system which provides our society’s standard of living.

OUR DAILY BREAD is a wide-screen tableau of a feast which isn’t always easy to digest - and in which we all take part. A pure, meticulous and high-end film experience that enables the audience to form their own ideas."

Wow. Just wow.

You know, I like to think I have a really solid understanding of industrial agriculture and food production. I like to think I have a good grasp of how crazy reliant our food is on cheap fossil fuels. But watching these images, I realise that my understanding has been mostly academic, formed in words and ideas rather than visuals. Well, my eyes are wide open now, let me tell you. Honestly, wow.

This is how most of us in the West eat. This is who we are. And it doesn't look anything at all like this.

The Urban Homestead Series: From the Medicine Chest

I have written part of this post with the middle finger of my right hand lifted precariously above the keys, wrapped in wet mallow and violet leaves.

Let me 'splain.

A torn and irritated cuticle became badly infected on the weekend. I first noticed it on Saturday but was busy and distracted with preparing to host dinner guests. On Sunday I finally had time to pay attention to it, but it still didn't seem so bad. I treated it with some plantain tincture and that was it. By Monday though, it was clear that my finger was not happy.

I've never had anything like that happen before and it was scary because I'm a bit of a total hypochondriac. No really. I once convinced myself that a pain in my jaw was an abscessed tooth that was about to burst and spread poison into my brain, leaving me to die a slow and painful death all alone. Turned out it was actually muscular in nature, originating in my neck, which yoga and the chiropractor I work for, are able to keep under control. I learned a good lesson from that incident though: never do a symptom search for 'jaw pain' on the internet right before going to bed.

Anyway, when my finger turned red, ballooned to twice its size, throbbed hotly and eventually oozed two little bubbles of pus (I know, eww! right?), I totally freaked out. I'm going to lose my finger! I'm going to lose my hand! I'll never be able to use my new thrift store purchased, hand powered ice cream maker that friends got me for my birthday. The poison will spread to my brain and I will die a slow and painful death all alone!

Then I got a grip with my non-infected finger hand and thought, "Cool! Here's a chance to put some of my herbal learning into practice." Another person may have thought, "Jeez this is nasty, I should go to the doctor." But not me. Nope. There was no way I was going to sit forever in some walk-in clinic, breathing in germy air, only to have a curt and harried doctor give me a prescription for antibiotics and send me away without ever once actually looking at me.

Oh sure, if things didn't improve or took a turn for the worse, I would definitely have sought professional help and I recommend anyone else to do the same. And please keep in mind that the following is not medical advice, and I'm not saying that everyone should treat their own pus filled infections. Pus filled infections are serious business and you could die a slow and painful death all alone! So seek appropriate help if necessary, k?

So, as I said, I tried plantain tincture on Sunday. Plantain is supposed to be the go to remedy for wounds, bites, stings, inflammation and the like. Matthew Wood writes that plantain "is able to draw out and close up pus and infection...it is excellent for a dirty wound, to draw out the dirt and infection and leave it in a clean state, and for boils and abscesses."

Hmm...well it's possible that it did draw up the pus into the tip of my finger leaving it more red, swollen and throbbing than ever, but my finger wasn't getting any better and after a day of this I knew the plantain simply wasn't going to cut it. I needed something stronger.

I already knew about the anti-bacterial qualities of garlic and remembered learning about similar effects in turmeric and always keep some in the house for that purpose as well as for culinary deliciousness. Last year I preserved fresh garlic in honey (which is also very healing and anti-bacterial) so I took a bit of the garlic honey and mixed in some turmeric powder to create a paste and placed that on my finger and wrapped it up. With that in place, I went to my herb books to do some more research. I read up on some of the herbs I had harvested and stored last summer and settled on two currently in my apothecary (a.k.a. my bathroom closet).

Joyce Wardwell, author of The Herbal Home Remedy Book, writes about what plants can be used for inflammation and infections including mallow and violet.

"Mallow. Apply poultices of mallow root or mallow leaf to draw out infections and soothe inflamed tissues. Apply the poultice as hot as is tolerable, and then add a hot-water bottle or hot cloth on top to keep it warm. Renew the materials as they cool. Continue this treatment until relief is felt. This remedy works equally well with plantain leaves.

When my husband awoke to a wound with ugly red streaks radiating from a throbbing armpit (indicating blood poisoning), the doctor was unable to see him for several hours. So I treated it as above, and within an hour the swelling had noticeably decreased. By the time of the appointment, the red streaks were hardly noticeable, so we canceled and kept up the treatment. By morning, the wound itself was nearly healed.

Violet. Violet poultices will soothe inflamed skin sores and abscesses, as well as help to draw out stubborn infections. p. 133"

What kind of mallow wasn't specified here, so I went back to Matthew Wood to see what he had to say. Of Malva sylvestris and neglecta or Cheeses and Low Mallow, he writes, "A simple poultice of the widely available leaves are used in folk medicine on infected finger wounds, skin inflammation, insect bites and bee stings. It draws out inflammation and pus..."

I only have Malva moschata, but read in another source that it can be substituted and used similarly to the other mallows so that's what I did.

I also realised from reading Joyce Wardwell that I was missing the important element of heat. Heat also draws out infection and inflammation and also raises the temperature beyond that which bacteria can survive in, which is why infected wounds become hot and inflamed. It's your body's own way of fighting off the infection.

So I poured hot water over the mallow and violet leaves and when it was cool enough to put on my skin without burning, I poulticed my finger with the leaves, refreshing them periodically.

This has been my treatment protocol for the last couple of days. I do hot mallow and violet poultices morning and night, and bandage with the honey garlic, turmeric paste during the day. (Yes, my finger does smell a little like garlic, but only if you get really close, so no one else would notice except for me, and I don't mind it.) The swelling, pain and heat have subsided steadily and things are almost back to normal. I will keep up this routine until all the symptoms are completely gone to ensure that the infection is totally cleared and doesn't come back.

No doubt this is a time consuming process and I've been totally focused on healing my finger for the last few days, but for me it's still a much better option than waiting in a walk-in clinic and taking prescription drugs and the dependence on cheap fossil fuels associated with that. Don't get me wrong, I'm very grateful to have access to mostly free health care and if I had thought the situation warranted it, I would have made use of the system. But I also really like the sense of empowerment and independence that comes from being able to practice basic healing and health care in the comfort of my own home with remedies as close as my garden or the kitchen cupboard. It's comforting to know that, for whatever reason, should I no longer have easy or affordable access to conventional health care (for the long or short term), there are other options available to me.

I heart Neil Young

"It's about where it came from and how it was grown."

Foraging in the City

"O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Wie treu sind deine Blätter!
Du grünst nicht nur zur Sommerzeit,
Nein, auch im Winter, wenn es schneit.—
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Wie treu sind deine Blätter!"

At this time of year, in this part of the world, there's not a whole lot of green in the landscape, especially in an urban environment. If there hasn't been a fresh snowfall for a while, and the sky is overcast, the end of January starts to look gritty, dirty and bleak. Not quite of The Road proportions, but close. I cast my eyes about, hungry for some spark of colour and freshness.

Enter the evergreen. Thank god for the evergreens. It's the conifers that get me through. Spruce, cedar, fir, juniper, pine. I love the scrubby bushes, the thick hedges, the majestic silhouettes of the trees. I love all the shades of green from emerald to blue, and the smells are downright heavenly.

And because there isn't much else going on in the plant world these days and I'm suffering from FWS (Forager's Withdrawal Syndrome), many of the conifers provide some lovely opportunities for winter foraging and medicine making. I've already enjoyed tasty pine tea and harvested juniper berries, which I'll talk about in another post. Last week I experimented with pine again, this time with an external preparation.

I took a long walk along the Rideau river checking out the pines and spruces. "Hey baby, looking good. Those some fine looking needles you got there. Yeah, you know it. Can I touch your bark?" Ok, maybe it wasn't quite like that, but I did get up close and personal with a few trees, looking for identifying marks and distinguishing features. I smelled and tasted the needles of various trees to discern differences in scent and flavour. This one lemony, that one resin-y, tangy, spicy, bitter...

From what I've learned so far, the best time to harvest conifers is in the late winter, early spring when there is new, fresh needle growth, so I wasn't planning on taking a harvest that day. However, as I walked along, I found a small pine branch on the ground that had fallen or been knocked down. I picked it up and carried it home.

Not knowing how long it had lain on the ground, and considering the season wasn't optimal for harvesting I decided I wouldn't bother with making a tea or tincture. I decided against an oil preparation for the same reason. I guessed that a strong alcohol maceration might do well to extract pine's constituents, so I went with 90% rubbing alcohol to make a liniment. A bottle of rubbing alcohol is cheap and if nothing else I would still end up with a disinfectant and sore muscle rub. With nothing to lose, I felt this was a suitable experiment to play with.

I cut some needles with scissors and filled a small jar with them.


I poured the rubbing alcohol over that and capped the jar. The liniment started to green almost immediately.


Because rubbing alcohol is toxic if ingested I made sure to label the jar clearly and thoroughly. This is for external use only! Also, I still haven't identified the exact type of pine tree, which I really ought to do, and plan on, but for now it shall remain Pinus species.


I took another picture of the liniment this morning in daylight. I can't stop looking at and fondling this jar. I am completely enamored by the gorgeous emerald green colour. It's so friggin' pretty I could cry.


I'll use this external liniment for sore muscles, joint pain and chest and sinus congestion. Mrs. Grieve talks about pines here and Susun Weed praises the white pine here.

The Urban Homestead Series: My Own Hallmark

This is my collection of cards and card making supplies. Thrift stores, church bazaars and charity shops are great places to find all kinds of unused, stationary items. I love my card supply because it means that I never have to buy a new, expensive card. I save money, reduce waste and I always have something on hand for every occasion. I store everything in a box that I keep on my desk. It's neat and tidy, yet easily accessible when I need it.


I celebrated a friend's birthday on the weekend and since he's a lover of fine food and drink, I gifted him with a bottle of my homemade, plum infused brandy. The bottle came from a consignment shop near my house.


I wrapped it in this pretty piece of linen purchased at a church bazaar and tied it with a drawstring separated from some random item a long time ago, that I had saved. From my card collection, I chose this old postcard from Spain. It kinda looks like the birthday boy and his awesome dudette and they visited Spain last summer. I skipped the envelope, since, unless you're mailing it, just seems superfluous to me.

Olé!


Update: Just adding some links with information on the environmental impact of the greeting card industry.

The Unstuffed Urban Homestead: Wordless Wednesday

Something Special for Ma and Pa

A) This episode makes me just a teeny bit weepy.

B) I so totally want Ma's red bonnet.

C) There was a time when I didn't need a saddle to ride a horse either. That was a long time ago though and it doesn't really have anything to do with anything, except that watching this clip reminded me that I used to ride horses a lot, sometimes without a saddle.

D) I so totally want to make Mary's winter bonnet/scarf for myself.

E) I wrap all my presents in brown paper, string and cloth too! Can I get a pioneer's fist bump yo?

F) I think Pa is handsome.

G) What are the chances that bonnets will come back into style? How weird would it be if I started wearing them regardless?

and finally,

H) I hope you all receive something special today.

Wishing you simple blessings, small gifts and boundless love.

Amber

Homestead for the Holidays

I left my home early yesterday morning to visit family for the holidays, but here are some pics that I've taken over the last week or so that reflect a little of my day to day at this time of year.
Decanting herbal tinctures, some of which will be gifted to family members. (I got the potato ricer you can see, at a thrift shop last week, but I won't be using it to rice potatoes. I'm repurposing it as an herb press. It works wonderfully for pressing out oil and alcohol macerations. This was an awesome thrift find!)

My coffee table with some Christmas crafts. Chopsticks in crochet holders will go to some sushi loving folk so they don't have to use the disposable, wooden chopstick at restaurants.

My cozy crochet corner with found lamp and chair.


There's always laundry to be done.


My Omas with flower and seasonal deco.


A Blue Christmas Kitchen


Silver and Gold


Red and Green


Frosty with plum infused brandy and basil vinegar.


My Tante M. made this ceramic shoe for me when I was seven. It's for Sankt Nikolaus Tag.

May you all enjoy a wonderful holiday!

Say Yogurt Cheese!

Jessica asked about my homemade herbed yogurt cheese, so today I'm going to provide you with the best resources I have found to make both yogurt and yogurt cheese. Making yogurt and yogurt cheese is really easy and so rewarding. I hope you try it!

I discovered this ingenuous method of making yogurt last year and have used it successfully many times since. (I don't own a microwave so I heat my milk on the stove top. I don't have a food thermometer either, so I use the 'stick a finger in it' method the author describes.) I have a two cup, widemouthed soup thermos that I picked up second hand a while ago and it works perfectly for making just the right amount of yogurt for one. I have used larger thermoses that have a more narrow opening, but they can be a bit tricky to clean. They still work, but if you can find a thermos with a wide opening, the clean up is much easier.

For anyone out there who hasn't made yogurt because they think they need special equipment, this method is for you!

Once you have your yogurt, homemade or store bought, you're ready to make yogurt cheese. (If you are going to use store bought yogurt, use the unsweetened kind with no gelatin or other additives. If you live in the NCR, I highly recommend Pine Hedge yogurt. It's local, organic and you can buy it in returnable glass jars. Most importantly, it tastes heavenly!)

Rhonda-Jean has a great post on making yogurt cheese.

And here is a good video to check out as well.

Wordless Wednesday

Rob Talks on Ted

Independence Days Week #30

30 weeks. Seven and half months. 210 days.

In the last 210 days I have planted and tended to a garden. I ate and preserved the harvest and shared some with friends. I connected with other gardeners who freely shared their bounty with me.

I learned that many of the plants that people call weeds are wonderful sources of free and nutritious food. Many of these plants and more are medicine. I now make my own medicine. Significant sections of my home have the look of an herbwyfe's apothecary. This gladdens my heart.

I make friends with anaerobic beasties, invite them into my home and ask them to stay awhile. They get real intimate with milk, cabbage and cukes and the resulting transformation is nothing short of alchemy.

I collect all manner of glass jars. Mason, pint, quart, corked, brown, blue, tall and short. I have a thing for cool stone crocks, simple hand tools and aprons.

I have a well stocked pantry, medicine chest, water supplies. My cupboards are filled with local goodies, homemade jams, pickled beets, dried beans. Squashes lurk amongst fruit butters and piles of books.

I have neatly stacked linens and cloth. Napkins, lacy handkerchiefs, scarves for gift wrapping. Wool blankets, cozy throws. Rags, pee wipes.

My craft section has grown. I have baskets of thrifted yarn, crochet cotton, my great grandmother's crochet hooks, embroidery hoops, ribbons, buttons, baubles and beads.

I look around and see that so much of the stuff of my life has been handed down, salvaged from the trash or purchased from yard sales, thrift shops, community stores and church bazaars. My place is small but if you came to visit me I could take you on a tour that would last for hours as I recounted the story that comes with many of the pieces that make up my home. Nearly everything has a history and tale to tell, much longer than your average trip from the foreign factory to cargo ship to big box store to trunk of car and the ride home.

All together it makes for a rather mismatched and quirky sort of place. My tastes run eclectic and my sense of aesthetics and lifestyle habits certainly aren't for everyone. But that's ok, because I'm doing much of this for me out of sheer pleasure and soul biggering joy and that suits me just fine. And when I come home, I enter into a cozy world, a haven well used and much loved and I wouldn't want it any other way.

Here is my last Independence Days update for this season.

Plant something:
- sprouts

Harvest something:
- dandelions

Preserve something:
- dandelion root tincture
- sauerkraut
- made and froze grape juice
- drying rosemary and thyme

Waste not:
- fair trade coffee in travel mug
- Indian takeout in reusable containers from the small family owned biryani restaurant in my neighbourhood

Want not:
- borrowed movies from the library
- gifts and things from church bazaar

Preparation and storage:
- final clean up of the kitchen and allotment gardens
- added popping corn, olive oil and 8l water to supplies
- storing local cabbage and squash
- added sterile gauze pads to medicine chest
- purchased hot water bottle
Exercise: yoga three times, biked to library and back, walked to farmer's market and half way back

Build community food systems:
- local food from farmer's market
- attended fundraiser for the Otesha Project (educating youth on the value of supporting local growers and buying local food being one of the many awesome things they do)

Eat the food:
- used some pumpkin puree in a soup
- currant jam is lovely on oats with walnuts and raisins

Take the medicine:
- elderberry syrup
- yarrow tincture
- nettle and dandelion vinegars
- sage honey
- plantain tincture
- daisy tincture
- cultivated American ginseng root