The Chickweed Lawn (old unpublished post)

Apparently I wrote this in February or March and forgot to hit "publish". . .


My yard is all chickweed!

Its a double edge sword to have a yard full of chickweed. I have all the delicious salad I could ever consume. The downside is that I don't want to pull any out, so I'm having trouble clearing my vegetable beds. I had a small patch of chickweed at my house in Goshen that grew low to the ground under the hose nozzle. The leaves were small and the flowers were even smaller. My chickweed lawn however grows calf high with leaves as long as my pinky. I would say that my current favorite thing about living in California is chickweed.




Chickweed is one of my favorite herbs, lucky for me it grows everywhere. Last winter it grew in the cracks of my rotting back stair case. Chickweed is a powerhouse of nutrition and a wonderful aid when dealing with inflammation and infection. Susun Weed highlights it as one of the 5 main herbs in Healing Wise, an excelent resourse for anyone who has a body.

I have made only one liter of chickweed tincture available for use in 6 weeks. I am thinking about making some more, unfortunately that would require me to buy 100 proof vodka.

Here is a super close up of a chickweed flower- they are very small and quite lovely:



A modest harvest:

No More Shampoo

I have stopped using shampoo.

This is not as drastic as it my sound. My boyfriend didn't even notice. No this isn't a crack on his powers of perception, my hair looks basically the same.

I had a brave friend march ahead of me on this, a little over a year ago she stopped washing her hair. She went through two months of grease-ball and then her hair calmed down and looked great. I myself did not want to go through two months of grease-ball, so I didn't even entertain the notion. In June she informed me she was now washing her hair with a mud mask adapted from the Terresentials hair wash. As you may notice I put a link to terresentials in an earlier post, (like 6 months ago) I had used this hair wash five years ago and loved it, only it was too expensive for the amount I felt I needed to use. After two months of remembering and then forgetting about the new hair cleansing options that had opened up for me I ran out of shampoo. My hair needed to be washed desperately, so I used an egg and some apple cider vinegar. My hair came out so lovely and clean, I immediately called my friend for the hair wash recipe.

I have read online that many people go through an adjustment period of two to three weeks after ceasing to use soap products on their hair. I went though one day. In the two weeks after I started using the hair wash I got a new job, performed in a chorus in front of a thousand people, and got dozens of complements on my hair.

My hair is lovely and longer than its ever been in my life. And I'm not spending $10 a bottle on stuff that says its organic on the label while the Environmental Working Group says is carcinogenic.


Are your body products toxic? Check http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com/index.php?nothanks=1 a site run by EWG that I love love love.

Candy and Vinegar

I have started making candy. Yesterday I made Turkish delight. It is delicious and the texture is perfect. I put on my to do list today "don't eat candy." I also made candy canes yesterday, they were not perfect, in fact the only successful candy cane was consumed by my neigbor. Today I have a bunch of nasty candy cane pieces laying all over the counter.

Its cold season so I thought I would share with you my two seceret weapons. Cold snap and Fire Cider. Cold Snap is a chinese herbal remedy that either speeds up your cold if you are in the middle of it, or prevents it from coming. Last September (2007) I fought off a cold by taking Cold Snap every time I sneezed.

Fire Cider is way way better then Cold snap.

I had my first Fire Cider in college. My roomate hade scored some from the herbalist collective. My second fire cider I made myself. Its an easy concoction. The batch I just made had too much cayanne pepper in it. Its far too spicy.

Rosmary Gladstar's FIRE CIDER!

Ingredients

1 quart Organic Apple Cider Vinegar

1/2 cup Horseradish root grated

1/8 cup of Garlic chopped

1/2 cup of Onion chopped

1/2 cup of Ginger grated

1 tsp Cayenne

(I add a tablespoon or two of yellow tumeric root. But only add that if you have it fresh.)

Directions

Place all ingredients in a quart jar and cover with Apple Cider Vinegar. Cap the jar tightly (if you have a metal cap line it with plastic or the vinegar will eat the metal) and steep in a cool dark place for 6 weeks. Strain into a clean jar and then decant into a clean contianer. I put mine back into the vinegar bottle. To decant put a cotton ball or wad o' cheesecloth into the chute of a funnel and pour fire cider in. Occasionally you will need to remove the cotton and rinse it off or it will get all gunked up.

A good dosage is between a teaspoon and a tablespoon a day when you are exposed to illness, or just feel like you could use a kick in the butt. This stuff is strong so I don't recommend it as an everyday medicine. I also add an ounce or two to greens, soups, and other yummies. And I have been known do shots of this stuff.

Coming home

I've been back from camp almost a week now, but it still feels like yesterday. I have thrown off many self-imposed restrictions, not the least of which is my regularly scheduled bedtime. The side effect of which is that I stayed up past 2 before work at 8:30 and then stayed up until 1 that night. Looks like I'm finally acting like a youth.

It has be hard to get back into feeding myself. Just one week of "the bell is ringing, lets go get our food" and it takes at least another week to relearn "I'm hungry, I'll have a snack" Since I am bad at managing to eat any meal besides dinner anyway, I have been wandering around the city partially hungry all week. Things are improving though, I'm remembering what I like for lunch. Thanks to the animal style grilled cheese at In and Out Burger, I made it through a wonderfully busy afternoon at the spa. Tonight I dices up some leeks and mushrooms and sauteed them in butter, when they were mushy I wilted some swiss chard in there, added some red wine vinegar and served it over brown rice. I thought It was quite yum, Jason was a little underwhelmed.

I am trying to get myself re-invigorated to paint the rest of our apartment. Especially our bedroom and the "front room." Both of those rooms get good light that show off just how ugly the colors are.

Nothing all that exciting is happening on the herbalism front the last few days. My purslane vinegar is still steeping. I have jumped back into learning flower essence therapy. I freaking love that stuff. I think I'll write about that in my next post. Hooray, a topic!!!

Back from Mendocino

California Witchcamp was amazing. Everyday felt as though I had a year in personal growth. I feel like a new person.

The only thing that I did not like at Witchcamp was eating what other people fed me. It was good food, but it wasn't my food. I came back and started making delicious things. Today I am going to set up some yogurt. Last night I made simple simple stuff. Steamed artichokes, oven fries, and steak. It tasted like bliss. I also had great friends to share it, which always helps.

Before I left I got some purslane vinegar going, that will be ready in 5 weeks.

Today I am going up to Tilden park with some fellow campers, which will be good. I miss the woods already. I forgot to mention before that I now have a garden, I think that will open up good things for me.

Apologies

Ok! I know, bad first date move. I try to convince you checking this thing is worth your time, that I am going to share good info about things, and then I dissapear for three months. Well it was a busy spring. Apparently it is not a good idea to start a new job and a new blog at the same time. Lesson learned. For the last four months, my scedule was such that I did not have two consecutive days off. With a little menuvering and some thought, I managed to secure a four day work week. Not bad for a lady in the first year of her career!!

I also went on an eight day excursion to visit Jason's family, Moved, had a best friend visit, and had my mom visit in the last 30 days. The excitement continues as another best friend comes tomorrow and 7 days from now I depart to the Mendocino Woodlands for Witchcamp.

I got a cold. The last time I got sick was in December, there was a nasty 3 week flu going around that everyone I know caught, I was sick for 3 days. Now I am sick and no one else I know is. I have exhausted myself and the future is not looking better in this regard. I am hoping to make some fire cider tomorrow. I was going to make that in March, If I had done that I probably wouldn't be sick right now.

At least I got to paint my bathroom; Its pale pink and looks lovely.

Tuesday musings

It feels like spring has committed to the East Bay. Since early last month its been on and off with the cold rainy weather and the almost warm sun that we have most of the year. But the explosion of vegetables in the market over the last two weeks has been astounding. I really like the Tuesday Berkeley Market. Its pretty small, and very crowded. I sometimes get squirrelly because I am going to run into people I know and have to talk to them. (I am not cut out for urban living.) I asked the woman working the Four Sisters Farm stand when they would be getting in purslane. She told me between two weeks and a month. I am getting excited for the return .

I have some nettle vinegar steeping in my cabinet and I look forward to making purslane vinegar soon too. The nettle vinegar is for all sorts of things, but mostly for calcium. The vinegar breaks down the calcium in the nettle leaves so that its easily absorbed by the body. It provides 150-200mg of usable calcium per tablespoon. Its less than you get from pharmaceutical sources i.e. calcium supplements, but is easily used by your body. The purslane vinegar will be primarily for omega 3. I have been taking omega suppliments on and off for a while. I am quite down on supplements in general so I will be happy to have the vinegar in a few months. I would also like to get some cod liver oil, not capsules because there is a strong chance that the ones that are in the capsules have gone rancid and there really is no way to tell, as you cannot smell them.

I made roast chicken breast last night. It went off well. I had some itsy bitsy blue potatoes from Berkeley Bowl and spring garlic with the stems attached. I halved the garlic bulbs and lay them down in a small casserole dish with the potatoes. I put the chicken on top, smeared it with butter, lay some lemon slices on top and sprinkled it all with rosemary, salt and pepper. It was quite tasty. My favorite parts were the spring garlic bulbs and the crispy lemon slices. While that stuff was baking I chopped up the garlic stems and sauted them in butter. When they were all tender I added lemon juice and poured it all over lightly steamed asparagus. WOW! Tonight I am going to make flattened artichokes. My parents sent me some artichoke recipes and as it is the beginning of "there are so many artichokes" season, I am going to bust through them all.

I was disappointed today. I hadn't made yogurt in a month or two and my culture had gone bad. I brought it on the plane from New York in January. The yogurt I made with that culture was never quite right so I'm not that upset. It took 12 or more hours to set up and then it was way liquidy. So I'll keep up the search for a delicious yogurt over here. It think St. Benoit might work, I'll get some when I shop next week.

Oh, I decided to experiment today and I tied some lavender into an old sock and threw it in the dryer with my clothes. It smelled delightful. I am super allergic to chemical fragrances so I can't use any detergents that have smelly stuff, not even essential oils. Hopefully this won't give me contact dermatitis. I would love to be able to make my laundry smell pretty.