Is Recession Preparing a New Breed of Survivalist? [Survival Today

Yahoo ran an interesting article this morning indicating a rise in the number of survivalist communities cropping up around the country. I have been wondering myself how much of the recent energy crisis is causing people to do things like stockpile food and water, grow their own vegetables, etc. Could it be that there are many people out there stockpiling and their increased buying has caused food prices to increase? It’s an interesting theory, but I believe increased food prices have more to do with rising fuel prices as cost-to-market costs have increased and grocers are simply passing those increases along to the consumer. A recent stroll through the camping section of Wal-Mart did give me pause - what kinds of things are prudent to have on hand in the event of a worldwide shortage of food and/or fuel? Survivalist in Training

I’ve been interested in survival stories since I was a kid, which is funny considering I grew up in a city. Maybe that’s why the idea of living off the land appealed to me. My grandfather and I frequently took camping trips along the Blue Ridge Parkway and around the Smoky Mountains. Looking back, some of the best times we had were when we stayed at campgrounds without electricity hookups, because it forced us to use what we had to get by. My grandfather was well-prepared with a camp stove and lanterns (which ran off propane), and when the sun went to bed we usually did along with it. We played cards for entertainment, and in the absence of televisions, games, etc. we shared many great conversations. Survivalist in the Neighborhood

Threats to US Security in the Early 21st Century

April 2, 2009

by John Robb

Congressional Testimony, House Armed Services Committee

I am here before the subcommittee today to provide testimony on 21st Century security threats. I hope this testimony is of value despite its brevity. My analytical method is to provide frameworks for decision makers to help them make sense of rapidly changing environments.

These frameworks are intended to provoke high quality thinking — agreement or disagreement with their specifics works equally well to achieve this.

The threat the US faces today is as dire as the darkest days of the Cold War. In fact, this threat may be even more dangerous because it is so insidious. The threat we face is a combination of global systemic threats (economic, financial, energy, etc.) that will damage us from above and the rapid emergence of violent non-state groups (a multitude of gangs, religious sects, tribes, clans etc.) that thrust at us from below.

Let’s begin with an acknowledgement that globalization has fundamentally changed the strategic security landscape. Most critically, it has enabled the emergence of a global super-network that is a tightly interconnected mixture of economic, financial and communication networks. The growth of this super-network has weakened nation-states across every measure of power, from control of its borders, finances, economy, media, etc. Worse, due to a combination of design decisions (hyper-efficiency, from just-in-time global supply chains to trillion dollar daily financial flows) and a complete lack of oversight during its growth phase, this super-network has now become a dynamically unstable system that is too large, fast, and complex for any nation-state or collection of nation-states to control.

This super-network has now entered a period of extreme turbulence due to several very dangerous feedback loops. These feedback loops include:

• Extreme debt. The US economy is saddled with a level of debt unseen since the start of the 20th Century’s Great Depression. Total indebtedness — the combination of consumer, corporate, GSE, financial, and government debt — is now over 350% of GDP. That is $30 trillion in debt over traditionally sustainable levels of 150% of GDP (in contrast, in 1929, the debt level was 290% of GDP). Unfortunately, this excess debt must be eliminated before we can return to economic growth. We are already seeing this as individual citizens and corporations cut back spending to repair dangerously damaged balance sheets.

• Excessive complexity. Due to relaxed oversight a vast unregulated financial system of extreme complexity, beyond the ability of anybody to understand, has emerged. This ‘shadow banking system’ is a collection of derivative financial products that are based on unsupportable assumptions for what constitutes ‘normal behavior’ (as in the use of normal curves that don’t account for the occurrence of extreme movements in financial markets over medium to long time horizons). Worse, this ‘shadow banking system’ is nearly an order of magnitude larger than the global economy upon which it was built.

The failure of AIG and the near miss financial meltdown last fall are examples of how this system can catastrophically fail. The likely outcome from this situation, barring a government sponsored unwinding of debt and derivative financial products (this is not being done), is a deep and protracted global depression that financially and economically guts nation-states across the globe. What this means for US security includes:

• Widespread state failure. Weak nation-states will quickly fall victim to financial collapse and internal chaos. Developing nations, like China , that are both dependent on exports to the US and weakly legitimate — China ’s legitimacy rest solely on its ability to deliver economic growth — may become very disorderly. It’s important to note that the real threat from China is not as a peer competitor; it is that it may suffer a disorderly fragmentation.

• Rapid growth in the number of violent non-state groups. With the failure or weakening of nation-states across the board and the lack of ideological alternatives, people will shift their primary loyalties to any group that can provide them security and the basics of survival. These groups will span the gamut of gangs, tribes, criminal syndicates, militias, religious sects, etc. Many, if not most of these groups, will maintain and expand the interests both vigorously and violently. The worst version of this trend line would be the expansion of the criminal insurgency in Mexico into the US (through expansion of the criminal ecosystem more than anything due to ethnic identity).

• Radical cuts in US defense spending. US budget deficits, already running in the trillions of dollars, will continue as the US tax base shrinks and bailouts continue. The rapid onset of severe budgetary restrictions will force a disorderly shrinkage in the DoD, DHS, and intelligence agencies, and due to gross misallocation of funding, severely damage the ability of the US to respond to the rise in non-state threats.

The rapid growth in violent non-state groups is likely to become the most worrisome security trend and it will likely define the vast majority of the conflicts we will face in the next twenty years. How these small groups organize, fight, coordinate, and ultimately defeat nation-states was the subject of my book, ‘Brave New War’ (amazingly, it’s in its third printing, which is very unusual for a book on military theory). Here’s a quick summary of some of its findings.

The rampant growth in interconnectivity (from economics to travel to communications) and torrential improvements in technology have already super-empowered small groups by radically increasing their ability to conduct warfare. This will only increase over time. Due to the combination of a doubling of computer power every two years (Moore’s Law and Carlson curves) and the expansion of electronic networks from cell phones to the Internet (Metcalfe’s Law), small groups are getting more powerful by the day. This will lead to:

• Do-it-yourself weapons (DIY). Cheaper and more powerful technology makes it possible to build more accurate, plentiful, and destructive weaponry. For example, DIY rockets being used in Gaza against Israel can now benefit from commercially available tools that include $150 rocket design software to a $25 autopilot system. We also saw numerous examples of this at work in Iraq with IED design. Over the longer term, DIY bioweapons will become commonplace as ‘labs on a chip’ and the expertise that used to take a room full of PhDs a week to build five years earlier is doable by a hastily trained technician in a couple of minutes.

• Systems disruption. Societal reliance on vast networked infrastructures (from electricity to oil to communications) makes it possible for small disruptions to do outsized harm.

Recent examples, like the disruption of a gas pipeline in Mexico that shut down 1,800 factories/companies for a week, show returns on investment of 100,000,000 percent (calculated by the damage done divided by the cost of the attack). Systems disruption is growing in usage due to the successful example seen in Iraq , where the country’s economy was held in limbo due to shortages of electricity, fuel, and water. Al Qaeda’s unsuccessful attack on Abqaiq (a central hub of the global oil system) and it successful attack on the Golden Mosque (in Iraq ) which set off the civil war in 2006 are other examples of system disruption.

• Global criminal financing. Easy access to vast multi-trillion dollar global criminal supply chains (made possible by the emergence of a global super-network), that connect customers with illegal goods/services, have made it possible for small violent groups to become not only financial viable, but financially successful. For example, the Taliban now has access to a portion of billions in opium sales to expand their operations, Mexico’s Narco-cartels and thousands of associated criminal subgroups are successfully waging a war with the government to protect and extend a market worth tens of billions, Nigeria’s gangs bunker billions in oil and fuel that in part funds disruption of oil production in the country.

In addition to the above, small violent groups are now developing new methods of organizing warfare. Rather than hierarchical and ideologically cohesive insurgencies (i.e. Communist insurgencies), we now face insurgencies that are made up of many small groups (organized around a plethora of motivations, as in many flavors of jihadi, nationalist, ideological, and criminal) that can loosely coordinate their activities. We saw this recently in Iraq and we are now facing this in Mexico and Pakistan . In this type of ‘open’ insurgency, we see very rapid rates of innovation in both tactics and weapons (as in the rate of improvement we saw in Iraq with IEDs). Worse, since these groups are so small and can rapidly emerge, any success against one group means little to the larger insurgency.

Against this dark picture, a combination of assault by a global economic system running amok and organic insurgency by superempowered small groups, there are few hard and fast recommendations I can provide. It’s complex. However, it is clear:

• We will need to become more efficient. Force structure will shrink. Most of the major weapons systems we currently maintain will become too expensive to maintain, particularly given their limited utility against the emerging threat. Current efforts from the F-22 and the Future Combat System appear to be particularly out of step with the evolving environment. Smaller and more efficient systems such as unmanned aerial vehicles and coordination systems built on open platforms (as in a Intranet) that allow organic growth in complexity make much more sense.

• We should focus on the local. In almost all of these future conflicts, our ability to manage local conditions is paramount. Soldiers should be trained to operate in uncertain environments (the work of Don Vandergriff is important here) so they can deal with local chaos. Packages of technologies and methodologies should be developed to enable communities in distressed areas to become resilient – as in, they are able to produce the food, energy, defense, water, etc. they need to prosper without reference to a dysfunction regional or national situation. Finally, we need to get build systematic methods for managing large numbers of militias that are nominally allied with us (like Anbar Awakening , Pakistan ’s Frontier Corps, etc.). Even a simple conversion of a commercial ‘customer relationship management’ system would provide better institutional memory and oversight than we currently have.

• We need to get better at thinking about military theory. Military theory is rapidly evolving due to globalization. It’s amazing to me that the structures and organizations tasked with this role don’t provide this. We are likely in the same situation as we were prior to WW2, where innovative thinking by JFC Fuller and Liddell Hart on armored warfare didn’t find a home in allied militaries, but was read feverishly by innovators in the German army like Guderian and Manstein. Unfortunately, in the current environment, most of the best thinking on military theory is now only tangentially associated with the DoD (worse, it’s done, as in my situation, on a part time basis).

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. It was a wonderful opportunity. I hope this brief introduction will serve as the basis of valuable thinking on future US security needs.

Source: http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/files/congressional-testimony1.pdf

[Last night, I had a google search open, looking for things to post here, and I noticed they had a list of additional/related searches at the bottom of the page, one had the word bomb in it and when I checked that page, it was all about making all kinds of bombs........at home.

If google is offering up the information, when the word was not used in my search, one has to think about how many sites there are on the internet with the information.

No, I was not surprised, have chased them down before and turned them in.

granny]

http://www.medicinewomantradition.org/persica.html

by Kiva Rose
http://medicinewomantradition.org

Common Name: Peach

Botanical Name: Prunus persica

Energetics: Cooling, moistening

Taste: Sweet, aromatic, bitter

Primary Organ System Affinities: Upper GI, uterus, nervous system

Specific Indications: dryness, heat, irritability and tension in sensitive, emotionally brittle individuals with a tendency towards inflammatory conditions and hyperimmune conditions such as allergies.

First, 10 Quick Reasons to Love Peach!

1. It soothes nausea (especially if accompanied by a red tipped tongue or symptoms of heat) better than any other herb I’ve ever used, including Ginger.

2. It’s safe during pregnancy, and can not just calm morning sickness but also seems to moderate some hormonal symptoms like anxiety and restless moodiness, as well as adding tone to the reproductive organs, especially the uterus.

3. It’s a supreme digestive tonic for those with signs of dryness and heat. Where there’s diarrhea, churning stomach and short transit time, Peach is wonderful. It can help increase appetite while soothing irritation, much like it’s close relative Cherry.

4. Peach can also help calm hyperimmune responses, including allergic reactions and some autoimmune conditions associated with heat. I specifically use it with venomous insects that result in a very red or hot site. In truth, it’s quite effective on any external inflammation (much like Rose) and in this way is very versatile.

5. As a relaxant nervine, it has the capacity to be very helpful in cases of insomnia and anxiety typified by tension, dryness and some level of burnout. For some people, it can act as nearly an outright sedative, but for others it’s just gently calming. It seems to really depend on what the person needs. It was one of Tommie Bass’s favorite nervines.

6. It makes a great addition to alterative and bitters blends, especially those including Burdock. By helping to relax tension, increase moisture, modulate digestion and calm the immune system, Peach helps the body to effectively eliminate waste products while restoring full health.

7. Peach is a very useful soothing, demulcent diuretic that can be used in UTIs or urethral irritation due to constitutional dryness or dehydration.

8. Adding a small amount of Ginger (a diffusive), speeds up its action, warms it a bit and makes it taste even yummier.

9. It’s yummy. It makes almost every formula taste better.

10. You can use it year round. Bark anytime, flowers and leaves in spring, leaves all spring and summer. Pits in fruit season. Very convenient.

And Now, An Ode to Peach

Although Peaches are closely related to Cherries, Apples and Roses, each of the Rosaceae species has its own very unique feel and personality. Peach has a feeling of longing and wistfulness, of hot southern nostalgia that smells like perfume and whiskey and fairies masquerading as fireflies and glow-worms on a summer night.

I often use Peach tincture when I find my fists unconsciously clenched or notice that I have built up tension manifesting as feeling overheated, parch-mouthed and overtly irritated. It makes a soothing, cooling nervine is such cases and won’t aggravate dryness. There’s something deeply restorative about Peach that I can’t perfectly describe, something that helps to heal hurt caused by grief or loss, or anger that stems from a deep wound. It works very well with it’s cousin Rose for these uses, especially if there’s any depression or sexual component involved. Where Hawthorn seems to work better for the raging grief caused by rejection or acute loss, Peach is often most specific where there’s some level of obsession or chronic focus on something lost or long awaited for, and that obsession manifests as ongoing irritation, tension leading to burnout and consuming sadness. That’s not say that Peach doesn’t make a fabulous general nervine, it certainly does. Peach leaf tea is a traditional Southern/Appalachian remedy for hysteria, anxiousness and nervousness. It’s quite safe and is particularly helpful for children, pregnant women and those of sensitive or delicate constitutions. It’s cooling, slightly moistening, relaxing and deeply restorative for burned out people still in the process of burning themselves out. This includes many peri or currently menopausal women with hot flashes, irritation, emotional lability and general hot-temperedness.

This is also a lovely remedy for all kinds of bothersome belly troubles, especially those accompanied by a sense of heat, flushed skin, a red tongue and nausea. In cases where there is less heat Ginger is a lovely warming addition. Nausea caused by pregnancy, menopause and other hormonal issues is especially responsive to Peach. In the same energetic vein, it’s also very cooling and soothing for hyperimmune/allergic responses and quite useful in the treatment of venomous insect stings/bites, allergic reactions and raging red infections of all kinds. It is espcially magical in the treatment of assassin bug bites, which usually cause extreme itching and pain for up to 48 hours. Using Peach bark tincture internally and externally on the bite site, the discomfort can be reduced to the duration of a mere hour or two, and very mild at that. Great stuff!

Depending on the part of the plant you’re using, Peach tastes sweet, aromatic and slightly bitter in varying proportions. It is cool energetically and somewhat moistening. Most parts of the plant are good for medicine and more or less interchangeable. I have used the leaves, twigs, flowers and pits all of which are delightful. Of the parts I’ve used, the pits are the strongest, but I prefer the twigs and bark for most things. However, all bits are very useful and will serve you well (and be very very tasty). I tend to save my leaves for teas and infusions for the most part, and although I find a normal beverage tea made with Peach leaf to be fine, I only make my Peach infusions in cold water.

One of my favorite tincture formulas for burnout/nervous exhaustion is 3 parts Milky Oats, 2 part Peach, 1 part Rose flower, 1/2 part fresh Ginger root and 1/4 part dried Nettle Seed. This is a nice smooth recipe to enhance mood, relax tension, calm the belly and cool excess heat. I do tend to work with it as a simple in most cases though, it is such a multi-dimensional and complex plant that it works very well on its own.

Did I mention it tastes nice? Really really nice.

A Special Bit About Peach Pits & Prussic Acid

I love the pits, and I try to save several quart jars worth from organic Peaches we processed each season. I let them dry for a few days in the shade, picked out the best looking ones, then deposited them into the jars before covering with brandy or vodka.

There’s a lot of weird hype around prussic acid in the Rose family and some interesting rituals around the processing of said plants. I suggest you do your research if you’re worried about it. My personal assessment tends to be that it would require fermentation in water to create trouble with normal medicinal use of Peach, Rose, Cherry or any of my other favorite rose family members. As usual, I’m a little on the laid back side and when it comes to Peach pits I haven’t had any trouble at all yet. Some people say to only let the pits macerate for a week before straining but I’ve often let mine sit for months. I figure as long as the tincture has that sweet, aromatic flavor it’s fine. If the flavor was to become markedly bitter or unpleasant I’d probably reassess, but my method has worked good so far. Some people also say that you should never ever use a cracked or broken pit in your tincture and while I’m sure this is good general wisdom, I have been known to throw in a few cracked pits when I’m running short and haven’t had any trouble.

The bark and flower tincture is aromatic and yummy, the leaf tea is subtle but sweet and wonderful and the pit tincture is something akin to heaven itself. The flavor is remarkable and intense. It seems to me that the pits tend to contain the strongest medicine of the plant and should be respected for that. I use smaller doses of my pit tincture than of bark, and definitely less than of Peach leaf tea (which I like to guzzle copious amounts of). I’ve never had or seen any adverse effects from its use but then I’ve never used more than a few drops at a time either.

Cautions & Contradictions: Chinese medicine considers Peach pit to be a blood mover, and therefore unwise to use during pregnancy. However, I have never had any issue with it whatsoever when used in small doses where appropriate. Traditionally though, it seems most common to use leaf or bark during pregnancy in the US so that’s what I tend to do as well. Also, this is an herb for HOT conditions, if a colder type person seems to need its medicine, be sure to warm it up with something like Ginger.

Preparation & Dosage: To used Peach as medicine, you can gather any combination of leaves, flowers, twigs, bark and pits. To make the tincture, I just cover a jar full of fresh plant matter with brandy. I definitely prefer a brandy tincture with this plant for taste and also simply because it seems to work the best. Any preparation of the plant tends to be most useful in small doses, and it doesn’t really improve with large doses. I use two to twelve drops of tincture, or a generous pinch of the leaf in tea.

Harvesting Notes: For a long time I gathered all my Peach leaves from a particular tree that grows next to the aquecia that runs through a friend’s backyard. It only gets water when the aquecia is running, the rest of the year it seems to thrive in its dry, sunny location with no added water. The tree rarely bears fruit, thanks to the late frosts common to the middle range of the mountains in New Mexico. When it does, it’s covered in masses of medium sized, firm but juicy and incredibly tasty Peaches!

The leaves, flowers and bark of this tree have always been exquisite - sweet, aromatic and strong. I was really excited when I found out another friend had multiple Peach trees in her back yard! I was sure I’d hit the jackpot, and would now have enough leaves for the summer’s tea and all my friend’s tea too. So I gathered up a big basket full and took them home to dry.

They dried to a nice fresh shade of green and I happily stowed them away in glass jars. Not long after, scooped up a few leaves and made myself a cup of tea with this new batch. After letting them steep for about five minutes, I figured the brew would be good and strong. I took a nice sip. Not so much. It was nice, but with only a hint of the taste pleasure from previous Peach tea drinks.

Grawr said I. What’s wrong with these Peach leaves? In the end, after making several cups of tea and comparing them and much tasting, I decided there was nothing wrong with them. They had the appropriate flavor, but were just very mild. So that batch has been relegated to the “beverage” pile, and the leaves from the original tree put in the “premium” pile.

I don’t really know what makes the difference between the trees - variety, soil, age, water or what. The only way to tell a great tree from a mediocre one is by checking it out sensorily (like so many things). So, what I would consider a premium tree would be one that one you gather the leaves off the tree, you can smell the sweet, slightly almondy/peachy aroma if you hold the leaves up to your face. The leaf itself will taste slightly bitter and astringent, but more along the lines of sweet and peachy with a hint of mucilage. The tea will be strong tasting without being overwhelming, full of flavor with a sweet, peachy/almondy taste. It should only be bitter if left too long to steep (optimal is about 3-5 minutes it seems, more than 10 minutes is too long).

Resources:

Mountain Medicine by Darryl Patton

The Practice of Traditional Western Herbalism by Matthew Wood

Personal Correspondence with jim mcdonald

The Physio-Medical Dispensatory by William Cook

>>>I am getting too many notices to post them all.

I know, isn’t it amazing? I did just throw my Stoneyfield yogurt out. It was not the one listed in the recall; but into the trash with it!

This should probably be in it’s own thread; but I have to run.

Subject: Baltic Dry Index
(Shipping situation that effects all of us)

An Email Received On the Baltic Dry Index:

I’ve been discussing the Baltic Dry Index (BDI) with everyone I can for months now. I started following it in June of 2008. It’s not a traded index so no one profits from the index itself, which makes it virtually manipulation proof. It is what it is and that doesn’t bode well for any of us.

OK, we have 26 shipping routes around the world that the BDI looks at . Shipping stocks are slaves to the BDI. Capesize Ships (over 100,000 tons) make up only 10% of the World Fleet but move 62% of Dry Bulk Traffic (at a given time Australia has 35/40, China 20, Brazil 40-50, . Africa 1-7). Panamax Ships (60,000-80,000 tons) make up 19% of the world fleet and move 20% of the Dry Bulk Traffic (at a given time Australia has 40-60, China 20-35, Brazil 3-12, S Africa 0-1). There is a third and fourth ship size but they are quite small and they aren’t moving either.

If we can use the Baltic Dry Index (BDI) as a guide for the next 12 months of product delivery and food availability in the stores we shop in then the BDI says shelves will be virtually empty of almost every product we use each and every day .

If the BDI is wrong it will be an historic first . The BDI is used by bankers, financial experts, brokers, traders and everyone in high-end finance to assess the global financial condition and the availability of products worldwide.

The BDI has dropped 94% in a short few weeks which means raw materials, grains, ores, steel, iron, cement and all imported products for food manufacturing and product manufacturing even though we actually do very little of that here in the US . We do make bread and other products that require grains, like cereals. We import clothing, gasoline, various fuels and, well, just about everything these days and the BDI says global shipping has shut down. NOTHING is moving . Because this spells disaster for a country that produces little and imports everything I have been intently blogging about the subject and asking people to view a short video I have posted (8 minutes) on:

http://thegreendragon.ning.com/video/vital-critical-you-must

The Baltic Dry Index (BDI) is an indicator of how much product is actually out for delivery throughout the world. It cannot be cheated or manipulated because it deals with actual products that are either actively being shipped, or are on docks awaiting to be shipped as Freight On Board (FO . As the chart below proves, back in June, 2008 the BDI stood at a reasonably healthy 11,600. As of today, the BDI has plummeted to 791. That’s about a 94% drop in goods actually being shipped worldwide .

This portends unprecedented disaster around the world, especially as it relates to food. Products are simply not being shipped . They aren’t being shipped because there aren’t any orders for them. This will translate into massive, unprecedented unemployment worldwide and, as things get worse, massive food shortages .

I have urgently asked each of you to stock up on dry foods like 50 lb bags of rice, 50 lb bags of oatmeal, beans, powdered milk, canned foods , canned vegetables and such to assure your family will have enough to eat when the world economy totally collapses . Many of you laughed me off as some sort of kook for making those suggestions, with some of you going so far as to call me “chicken little, the sky is falling.” Well, it appears I’m having the last laugh.

I correctly forecast the economic meltdown which took place in September.

http://www.medicinewomantradition.org/pantry.html#Rose%20Vinegar

Herein you will find a menagerie of food and medicine recipes, varying from my favorite grainless bread to pain relieving salve. These are just the bare bones recipes so if you if you need help learning basic medicine making, head over to the Mortar & Pestle page for further elaboration. It’s important to realize that medicine making, like food making, is a fluid, dynamic art. There’s no such thing as the perfect salve, it just all depends on what the need is and what the place provides. So while recipes may be very useful to the herbalist in the sense that they provide inspiration and come with the benefit of the maker’s experience, they are meant to be adapted and interpreted by each new set of hands. Like traditional music and storytelling, the beauty and strength of the song or story or medicine or pie, has the capacity to grow and deepen with each generation and perspective. That’s exactly while you’ll find my own personal variation on the infamous fire cider and my new-fangled adaptation of Elderberry Syrup here.

I have always had a passion for food, perhaps even more so since I’ve adopted a paleo-style diet and I’ve had to be creative in order to eat satisfying and interesting meals. I’ve collected a few tasty recipes here for your enjoyment. There are many more I’ve yet to write down, and I will add to this page as I’m able.

Loba painted the beautiful watercolors you see here, and I’m especially in love with the birthday portrait she did of me cooking nettle soup a couple years back.

………………………………………………………-Kiva Rose

bottles

Table of Contents

Gila Harvest Cider

Golden Flax Bread

September Sweet Cream Delight

Simple Belly Brew for IBS with Excess Heat

Elderberry Immune Elixir

Wild Rose & Chokecherry Liniment for Inflammation

Rose Vinegar with Sunburn Treatment

Winter Wanderings Tea

Herbal Steam for Congestion

Quick Ginger Ale for Upset Bellies

Summerlands Pain Liniment/Salve

Sacred Canyon Salve

Woodlands Drawing Salve

Spirit of the Desert Salve

Bone Deep Balm

Wild Rose Elixir

bottles1

by Kiva Rose
http://medicinewomantradition.org

http://bearmedicineherbals.com/?p=190

Harvesting & Medicine Making with Cottonwood Bark

Published by Kiva Rose at 8:35 pm under Medicine Woman Materia Medica

I’ve spent part of the the last couple days harvesting copious amounts of Cottonwood bark from abandoned beaver cut trees. Although I prefer to gather this particular bark in Spring while I’m also harvesting the sticky resinous buds, the opportunity is far too good to pass up. In the past I used my standard hunting/harvesting knife for peeling bark, but if you’ve ever done it, you know it’s a slow process. This year Wolf gave me a great invention, a draw knife, which is a long blade with a handle at each end. I love this thing, it cuts the peeling time down to a fraction of my usual time. Now, usually I don’t even take bark this way, because I don’t like to cut a whole tree in order to get some bark. My normal practice is to gather twigs and use them, this makes for great medicine and does little harm to the tree. In this case, the trees were already downed so I went for the actual body bark.

I now have, I dunno, about seven pounds of fresh bark and I’ll probably get another five tomorrow. Cottonwood is one of my favorite medicines so this is a welcome addition. First, I cut the five foot long strips of bark into reasonable lengths for drying and storage. Next, I choose premium pieces for liniment, salve, vinegar and tincture. Next, I roughly chop it and fill the various bottles before filling again with the chosen menstruums.

One of my favorite uses for Cottonwood is a salve made from the January buds, this is a great pain reliever for arthritic joints, injuries, tendinitis and other similar sore body parts. It also makes a good chest rub all by itself. Michael Moore says to think about it as a replacement for Wintergreen oil without the chance of toxicity that the latter has. The buds are the strongest part of the plant, and a tincture of them makes a great expectorant for congested chest colds. The buds are not very soluble in water, so I mostly make oil and alcohol based preparations of them. The bark and leaf are more available in water, so I use the bark every which way and use the leaves in teas. All parts of the tree are pain relieving (as most members of the Willow family are) and can be used internally for the same kind of pain you might take an aspirin for, and can also be used to help bring down fevers when that’s appropriate. The amount of pain relieving constituents in each stand of trees seem to vary somewhat so it’s helpful to get to know your local trees and gather from them consistently so you can judge your doses more accurately.

Cottonwood is also an effective bitter stomach tonic, and I use it many of my bitters mixes, along with Wild Licorice, Oregon Grape Root, Wild Cherry and Orange Peel. The bark macerated in Apple Cider Vinegar makes a great general stomach tonic, and works well for appeasing a sour stomach with rotten egg burps, an unpleasant but useful detail.

Another similarity with other Willow family trees is it’s gentle, persistent effect on the kidneys and bladder. It seems to be most useful in chronic, slow to heal infections rather than acute, scalding infections. It has a tendency to make the urine more acid, and to help tone up the mucus membranes. I like it with Bidens for chronic UTIs and prostate enlargement and it also is quite useful to tone the uterus and vaginal muscles. The medicine as a whole is most useful in cases where tonification and warmth is needed, however, it can also be helpful in certain cases of chronic inflammation when accompanied by weakness. It’s less warranted where there’s excessive irritation or great heat.

A salve made of any part of the plant is incredibly useful in a general wound salve, reducing inflammation, encouraging healing, eradicating bacteria and tightening surrounding tissue. Nearly every salve I make has at least a portion of Cottonwood in it, what part of the tree I use is dependent on season and availability. I especially love the rich, river in the spring scent of the bud resin oil, which I use very similarly to how most use propolis. It’s also a very useful antioxidant and I add it to other oils to keep them from going rancid. It’s possible to make a really nice butter salve with the buds waterbath infused in ghee.

Cottonwood is another one of my top ten most valuable herbs that I can’t live without. I also love that it’s abundant and common throughout the West, making for easy and sustainable harvest. All of the Populus spp. including Aspen, Balsam Poplar and Cottonwood can be used fairly interchangeably, and those with the most and smelliest resin make the best salves. They make great beaver food too. ;)

References:

Medicinal Plants of the Mountain West by Michael Moore
Medicinal Plants of the Pacific West by Michael Moore
Herbal Medicine of the American Southwest by Charles Kane
Discovering Wild Plants by Janice Schofield
The Herbal Home Remedy Book by Joyce Wardwell
Edible and Medicinal Plants of the Rocky Mountains and Neighbouring Territories by Terry Willard
King’s Dispensatory
Ryan Drum
The Physiomedical Dispensatory

http://bearmedicineherbals.com/?p=320

Pantry Medicine: A Simple Poultice for Swelling

Published by Kiva Rose at 1:13 pm under Medicine Making

I really like to use simple, downhome remedies whenever possible, preferably made up of weeds and food. Here’s great poultice for swelling and inflammation can be rigged up with common items from your pantry and weeds from your yard. It can also be easily customized to individual needs.

Ingredients
1 Cabbage leaf
1 small Potato
Cooling, anti-inflammatory weed (like Plantain, Mugwort, Sweet Clover, Chickweed, Alder leaves etc.)
Appropriate tinctures (optional)

So, first grate up the potato so that you have a nice 1/2-1 inch thick covering for the injured area. Then get the weed and chop or mash it up before blending it with the potato. By the way, if you don’t have a potato, you could always use grated cabbage instead.

If you want the added horsepower of more herbs in a concentrated form, you can mix some powdered herb in or add a few squirts of a tincture in. So if you had a sprained ankle and wanted to take the swelling down and relieve inflammation while not reducing mobility (in the way that ice can) then you could use fresh Mugwort as your weed component of the poultice then add Goldenrod and Peach tinctures for added cooling power. It all just depends on what you need, and also whether the skin is broken. If the skin IS broken, you’ll likely not want the tinctures (stings like hell, but might be appropriate in some cases) and will prefer a great proportion of mashed fresh plant matter.

Next, you pile the potato/herb mix onto the affected area and gently mold it to the flesh. Then take a piece of cabbage or even a whole cabbage leaf if the area is large enough, and place it over the potato mush, ideally making sure the cabbage leaf extends beyond the borders of the potato/herbs. It can be left as is, covered in gauze and taped down, or you can just apply the tape directly to the cabbage and strap it on there. Be sure not to apply the tape too tightly.

In most cases, the poultice can be changed every 6-8 hours, but if there is serious inflammation or the poultice starts to feel hot then I like to change it more frequently, often every 1-3 hours for the first day and then adapt from there.

If you have pets, they may want to eat your poultice which I don’t recommend at all. In fact, I strongly suggest keeping it out of the reach of small children and animals, depending on just what you put in there. Also, be sure to compost the poultice when you’re done, you wouldn’t want anyone to mistake it for dinner ;)

Note: for children who won’t leave the poultice alone, a simple poultice of cooked mashed potatoes (hold the salt and butter) can be folded up in some muslin or a muslin bag and applied that way. Chopped or mashed fresh herb can be added once the potatoes have been cooked and then the mix sealed in muslin or cheesecloth. The plain mashed potatoes are useful for the two year old that tries to eat everything you place on his/her body. Whether you use the poultice warm or cool mostly depends on what you’re treating.

http://bearmedicineherbals.com/?p=102

Mysterious Pink Mallow & Other Mucilagenous News

Published by Kiva Rose at 1:40 pm under Green Tidbits, Medicine Woman Materia Medica

Mysterious Pink MallowLookee, here’s my mysterious Pink Mallow. I know that if I look through enough field guides I WILL find it but I haven’t had a chance to really dig for it just yet. So if you know what it is, please tell me!

It’s a bumper crop for all the Mallows this fall, and the Medicine Lodge is packed from door to door with drying Globemallow leaves and roots. These juicy little bits play an integral part in my daily infusion. I’m on a quest to effectively re-hydrate my whole body and Mallow is a prime ally in this endeavor. The leaves are really quite mild tasting and make an excellent addition to any infusion. The roots are stronger tasting, but are still good if you dilute the infusion down by half or more and drink throughout the day like water.

I also mix Mallow root powder into a sweet paste with raw honey and some Cardamom to eat whenever my belly is burning or feeling overheated, it tastes a bit weird, but works really well. Malllows are slow but sure healers that can heal previously considered unhealable wounds (in the gut, on the skin etc) when used over a long period of time.

I also use Mallow oil in lots of my salves for extra moisturizing healing. I even tincture my Mallows though many people don’t because the mucilage likes to precipitate out and turn everything into a gooey separated mess, to avoid this make use a low proof alcohol for your tincture. I make fresh leaf tincture for UTIs and lung problems, and a root or whole plant tincture for the instant cool down effect it provides. Mixed with a bit of Peach, it’s perfect for people who are irritated and anxious because of internal/external over heating.

A paste made of Mallow root powder, Aloe gel and a bit of diluted Rose petal vinegar can do amazing things for burns and irritated, angry looking rashes. If you don’t have the Rose vinegar you can also use a drop or two of Rose otto or a small amount of diluted Rose petal tincture.

I did a longer post on Mallows as Yin tonics a while back, you can find it here.

6 Responses to “Mysterious Pink Mallow & Other Mucilagenous News”

1.
# shamana floraon 07 Sep 2007 at 1:50 pm

maybe this will help?
http://www.malvaceae.info/Genera/gallery.html
2.
# Kiva Roseon 07 Sep 2007 at 2:12 pm

Darcey, damn you’re quick! Yes, it helped quite a lot actually. Looks like it’s an Anoda of some kind, probably an A. cristata. Nice link! And thank you.

http://bearmedicineherbals.com/?p=212

Pain Salve for Wood Chopping Hands & Some Notes on Salve Bases

Published by Kiva Rose at 6:36 pm under From the Hearth, Therapeutics and Nutrition

3 Parts Larrea leaf/flower infused oil
2 Parts Cottonwood bud infused oil
1 Part Cypress (or Thuja) leaf/berry infused oil
1 Part Ginger root infused oil
Sprinkle of Chile powder (you can use Cayenne, but I prefer Chile Piquin myself)

Blend oils and Chile powder, then add melted beeswax until you reach your desired consistency. I’m assuming you know how to make a basic salve. If not, wait until I do my post on basic medicine making and then makes this salve ;)

Another method is to either add lanolin to the infused oils, or to actually infuse the herbs directly into lanolin or lard or ghee or whatever happy, wholesome kind of animal fat you’ve got on hand. This latter method needs to be done over a low heat for a long time. Some people do this in a double boiler, but me, I just pop it all into a skillet on a cool corner of the woodstove and stir frequently. When the herbs are somewhat crispy and the fat has taken on the color/scent of the plant matter, it’s done. This is the time honored way of making salve by a great many peoples, and variations on this are still used in Chinese Medicine, and other traditional systems of medicine. Animal fats absorb better into human skin than vegetable oils and are far preferable for burns or other hot skin conditions.

Yes, lanolin does smell pretty funky, but aren’t medicines supposed to have, um, character? Besides, you’ll most likely grow fond of it after a while. Some people have lanolin sensitivities so you’ll want to be sure have your salve jar clearly labeled that it contains it. I’ve never met anyone with a lard sensitivity, except vegans, but that’s different.

Anyhow, this makes a pain relieving and very healing salve for chapped, sore, ax handle battered hands. It works quite quickly and is amazingly effective. The Larrea can be removed if you’re not a Southwesterner and the salve will still work well. It’s most beneficial if used soon after the battering or chapping, but will be helpful at any point.

Other optional ingredients are Alder bark or leaf, black Pepper, Rosemary, Juniper, Comfrey or even some strong Peppermint or Wild Mint. The point is to have penetrating, tissue healing, circulatory stimulant and anti-inflammatory actions involved here. Often, aromatic and resinous herbs fall into these categories and you will find world-wide use of certain common plants like Cottonwood, Cypress and Juniper for muscular pain.

Note: If you make salve in a skillet and you use aromatic herbs like Larrea or Cottonwood that aren’t exactly culinary, you should probably not use cast iron because it absorbs flavor unless you’re going to dedicate the skillet to that purpose. Otherwise, your bacon and eggs could taste like Creosote Bush ~forever~

# Kiva Roseon 03 Dec 2007 at 7:59 pm

deer don’t have much fat, but what they do have is very nice. there’s a reason many traditional recipes calling for wild fat refer to bear or beaver, since they have so much more fat on their body.

good, pasture raised lard is also an amazing substance for making salves.

congrats on the wood stove, a good stove makes life so much nicer. I love our antique beauties, but the new airtight models are awfully efficient.

http://bearmedicineherbals.com/?p=168

Herbal Honeys & Pastes for Blood Building, Burn Dressings & More

Published by Kiva Rose at 10:27 am under From the Hearth, Therapeutics and Nutrition

It’s become fairly common knowledge even among the scientific establishment that honey makes a superior burn and wound dressing. It’s especially good at preventing and resolving infection, even with antibiotic resistant infections. It also excels at keeping inflammation to a manageable level and seems to help the regeneration of new tissue.

The next obvious step is to use herbal honeys for wound and burn dressings! If raw honey is already an amazing treatment then adding the further healing properties of herbs can only improve the mix, right?

So here’s a basic recipe for an herbal honey and some ideas for herbs to use especially for wound and burn dressings. You can, of course, eat the honey as well in order to integrate healing into the body, and because they taste good.

Fresh Herb Infused Honey

1 glass jar with lid
enough raw, preferably local, honey to fill the jar
enough fresh plant matter to fill the jar (less for roots, more for flowers)
a chopstick or stick

Fill the jar, more or less, with roughly chopped (or smushed, for berries) plant matter. Then, drench the plants with slightly warmed (enough to be pourable) honey until almost full. Stir with stick or chopstick until thoroughly mixed. Then poke at the mixture to release any remaining air bubbles. Top off with more honey.

Let sit for a few to six weeks in a warm place or until the honey takes on the taste and fragrance of the herb. If the herb you used is not terribly palatable, then strain it off and preserve the honey. Otherwise, I like to keep the herb in the honey to nibble on, use in food, etc. If you live in a humid, moldy climate you may want to either keep the jar in the fridge or add some (as you like, any amount will help preserve it) brandy or rum to the mix. I’ve never had a problem with my honeys going off, but some people do with fresh plants.

Dried Herb Infused Honey

1 glass jar with lid
enough raw, preferably local, honey to fill the jar
enough dried plant matter to fill the jar about a third of the way (less for roots, more for flowers)
a chopstick or stick

If you have tough roots or woody plant matter to deal with you may want grind it up a bit to expose more cellular surface to the honey. For flowers or leaves just break down with you hands or a mortar and pestle to a fairly regular cut sifted kind of texture. Place herbs in jar, cover with honey, stir and poke as above. Top off with more honey and let sit, finish just as above. See, easy.

Honey Paste Variation: If you use a finely ground herb to mix with the honey you can just stir it together and make a lovely honey paste, then you don’t want to strain at all, but keep the plant in the honey. You may also want to use a higher proportion of herb to honey in this case, at it will thicken with time. You can then make little honey balls called pastilles and roll them in some herbal powder (licorice is popular) and let them dry for a few days. They make excellent cough drops and slow release herbal pills. Or you can just keep it as a paste to apply directly, eat directly or add to tea. This preserves the herb indefinitely and is an excellent vehicle for the whole plant. Fragrant roots such as Ginger, Osha, Sweet Flag, Echinacea etc all do very well this way. Dried berries are also great this way.

Favorite Herbal Honeys

Rose petal Honey - It tastes AMAZING, it’s cooling and relaxing. Externally, it’s amazing for burns and infections of all kinds

Bee Balm Flower Honey - Mmm, spicy, sweet, invigorating and relaxing. Another great anti-infective and burn soother. Great internally for coughs, sore throats and lung stuff. And basically anything else that Bee Balm is normally good for.

Ginger Root Honey - Warming, stimulating and especially good for old wounds that refuse to heal.

Elderberry Honey - An old favorite! Great for immune modulation and energy as expected but also great externally for nearly any kind of wound or burn.

Rosehip Honey - This, and any other berry honey, makes an excellent tonic to build the blood and gently restore the nutritive balance of the body. Great for deficiency caused anemia and weakness.

Sage Honey - Extra nice for sore throats and lung stuff. Also very useful active infections.

Happy Girl Honey (inspired by Ananda)
1 part Goldenrod flowers, 1 part Lemon Balm and 1 part Ginger - A nice, tasty mood lifting winter survival honey.

Elder Mother Honey
2 Part Elderberry, 1 Part Elderflowers, 1 Part Rosehips, 1/2 Part Osha & 1/4 Part Ginger or Sweet Flag
Great for viruses and immune stuff, especially bugs that settle in the lungs and never want to leave. It’s great even without the Osha. I really like this with at least some portion of rum or brandy.

Winter Root Honey
1 Part Osha, 1 Part Sweet Root, 1 Part Wild Ginger & 1 Part Monarda Flowers
An adaptation of a Michael Moore suggestion. Strong, hot and sweat inducing.

Honey Paste Recipes

Bear Medicine Honey Paste
3 Part Elderberry, 1 Part Rosehips, 1/2 Part Osha, 1/2 Part Ginger & 1/4 part Lemon or Orange Peel
Make it nice and thick and suck on a little chunk when you start getting a scratchy throat in the Winter.

Briar Rose Deluxe Honey Paste
2 Parts Rose petals, 1 Part Rose hip, 1/4 Part Orange Peel, 1/4 Part Ginger
Nice on the sore throats, is nearly as good just made with powdered Rose petals and honey. You can spice it up more with Cardamon if you like.

Ok, I’ve wandered a bit from burn dressings, but you get the idea. Most all of these recipes are extremely multi-purpose and can be used for both external and internal use. Enjoy!

#
# kristineon 22 Oct 2007 at 2:52 pm

one teaspoon 3 times a day is recommended for therapeutic doses. for me, it helps to cure those ’sweet tooth’ cravings while it kills candida. what could be better than that?!

what a great lot of recipes. they all sound so yummy. have you ever tried chokecherry bark in honey?
#
# Kiva Roseon 22 Oct 2007 at 3:40 pm

Hey Kristine, what’s your reference for the candida stuff? Do you have a link or a book, I’d like to look into it more.

I haven’t done chokecherry bark honey yet, just chokecherry bark elixir with honey and brandy…. it’s on the todo list though!

#
# Kiva Roseon 22 Oct 2007 at 8:13 pm

I meant that in the cookbook sense, strain out and discard the plant matter and keep (preserve) the honey.

But yes, warm the honey and put it through a mesh strainer, muslin may work eventually but it’s a sticky nightmare in the meantime.

Oh yes, the SJW honey would be wonderful for burns and wounds!

#
# kristineon 23 Oct 2007 at 4:18 pm

patricia kyritsi howell talked about using it during her seminar at the southeast women’s herbal conference. i went onto the waikato institutes page and found this:

http://iadr.confex.com/iadr/2004Hawaii/techprogram/abstract_43358.htm

it talks about its effectiveness for oral candida. in another section, it talks about honey being effective against other types of fungus.

i couldn’t find a direct link to where she got her research. i may email her and ask her if she remembers where she found it.
#
# Kiva Roseon 23 Oct 2007 at 4:51 pm

Interesting, thanks for this Kristine, I’d love to know if Patricia has any first hand experience with this and any other references she might have.

So this would be direct application as opposed to internal use. And they’re specifically referring to Manuka honey and Manuka itself is very antimicrobial.

Theoretically then, we’d need a honey made from a plant that had similar qualities. Probably not your typical clover honey.

We do know that all high quality honey is generally antimicrobial.

Here’s a quote from a pubmed study that can be found at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=16099322&ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVAbstractPlus

RESULTS: Twelve of the 13 bacteria were inhibited by all honeys used in this study with only Serratia marcescens and the yeast Candida albicans not inhibited by the honeys. Little or no antibacterial activity was seen at honey concentrations <1%, with minimal inhibition at 5%. No honey was able to produce complete inhibition of bacterial growth. Although Medihoney and manuka had the overall best activity, the locally produced honeys had equivalent inhibitory activity for some, but not all, bacteria. CONCLUSIONS: Honeys other than those commercially available as antibacterial honeys can have equivalent antibacterial activity. These newly identified antibacterial honeys may prove to be a valuable source of future therapeutic honeys.

Another study on pubmed says that SOME kinds of honey have been found active against Candida.

Of course, all these studies are in vitro, which doesn’t seem very practical to me.

So, anyone got any first hand experience? And how does the sugar content (which feeds yeasts) even out with the antibacterial effects and what’s the bigger pattern here?

#
# Kiva Roseon 24 Oct 2007 at 8:02 pm

Depends if you’re using them fresh or dry. If you’re doing dried and want grind them up, you might want to break them up and get the seeds out.

When I use them fresh, I just pull the stems of the ends (so the honey can get inside), cover with honey and mash them a little bit, not enough to get the hairy bits everywhere, just enough to bruise them some. For external use I prefer to leave the seeds in there for honey, tincture or oil, since the seeds themselves are so full of healing properties.

Or, if you want to eat the rose hips all soaked in honey, then it does work better to just use the seeded berries.

http://bearmedicineherbals.com/?p=544

Pastilles - Sweet Soothing for a Sore Throat & Beyond

Published by Kiva Rose at 3:46 pm under Medicine Making

My version of pastilles are little balls of herbal powder held together by something sweet. They’re ideal for sore throats but can be used as a tasty dose of herbal medicine for many different issues, including belly troubles, anxiety or any number of other things. My original recipe came from the wonderful Herbal Home Remedy Book by Joyce Wardwell, but I’ve long since quit looking at the recipe so my version may vary a bit from hers at this point.

These are super simple to make, easy enough for children to help with and far less messy or demanding than most lozenges (though those are definitely worth learning to make as well) and require very few ingredients. They’re very transportable, children love them (usually) and to top it all off, they’re extremely effective. Many kinds of medicines can be made with the pastille recipe, a very quickly and easily absorbed form of medicine administration that is gentle enough for almost anyone. It also preserves the herbs extremely well, better than alcohol in some cases. So don’t just limit your use of these to seasonal colds, but explore their many applications for children and adults alike.

Mucilaginous herbs like Elm or Mallow work very well as a base for pastilles, they’re sweet, soothing and they help to bind the pastille together. They’re not necessary, but I definitely prefer them, especially for sore throats.

Ingredients

* Finely powdered herbs of your choice (say 2 parts Mallow root, 1 part Sage leaf and 1 part Rose petals)
* Honey, Maple Syrup or some other thick, sticky sweetener. If you use honey, you can use an herbal infused honey for added benefits. Rose or Sage honey is amazingng and ideal for this kind of thing.

How much you make is up to you, but I suggest starting with a fairly small batch until you find what works best for you, though I’ll provide you with some of my favorites.

Ideally you want to make about half of your herb powder mix something like Elm or Mallow to provide a sticky base. The other half depends on what your using them for. For sore throats, I really like Rose and Sage, either by themselves or together. They’re both astringent, antimicrobial, healing and anti-inflammatory and Sage has a special affinity with the throat. Beebalm, Elderflower, Cottonwood (Poplar) buds, Calendula and even Osha can make good combos and some people like a bit of propolis thrown in.

Then you simply slowly add enough warm honey to make a thick paste, about a teaspoon at a time. If it gets too gooey you can add more herb powder to thicken it back up. Keep in mind that the gooier it is the harder it will be to dry it. Then take small pinches of the dough and make about marble sized (or smaller) balls, setting them aside on a piece of wax paper or something similar.

After you’ve finished the whole batch, let the balls dry in a warm, dry place. You could put them in the oven at a very low temperature, on top of the fridge or in the wood stove warmer. Depending on what method you use and your climate, they’ll be dry and fairly hard within a few hours to several days. You want them dry to help prevent spoilage and so that they dissolve slowly in the mouth rather than being just a gooey lump.

Once they’re dry, wrap each one separately in wax paper, cling wrap or similar and then store in an airtight moisture-free container. If stored properly, they’ll often last several years. The mucilaginous and astringent properties tend to last a lot longer than the volatile oils (in plants like Rose or Sage), so you’ll notice a slow change over the years, with the gooey soothingness usually the last property to go if you used a nice mucilage like Elm or Mallow.

Note: If you don’t finely powder the herbs, you’ll have gritty bits in your pastilles, which may put off some children or texture challenged adults. If you’re powdering your herbs yourself, you may want to put them through a fine sieve as well.

Also, check out my previous post on Herbal Honeys for more ideas and recipes.

http://animacenter.org/blog/

Wild Nettle Season:

Savory Buckwheat Cakes with Nettle Yogurt Dip

by Loba

(www.animacenter.org)

lobarhinettles.jpgDespite their somewhat scary reputation, Stinging Nettles are beautiful and healthful plants. Packed with Protein (more so than even beans!), Iron, Calcium, Magnesium and vitamins A and C, these glowing native plants are one of the most nutritious and tasty greens available anywhere. Native Americans knew about the bounty of the Nettles and used them for fiber as well as food. Each Springtime, Rhiannon, Kiva and I can all be found excitedly watching the young Stinging Nettles come up beneath the oaks and willows. The moment they’re big enough we pick a bagful for this delicate and flavorful dip! We’re always sure to pick the young Nettle shoots with sturdy gloves on so as not to be stung by the formic acid (the same substance that fire ants contain) that is released by the tiny hairs that cover Nettles. Don’t worry, the sting in Nettles disappears completely when they’re boiled. We love Nettle Yogurt Dip on homemade challah toast with cheese and toasted almonds, whether for dinner for breakfast… but also try it on a hot baked potato, topped with a poached egg.

It’s truly been a wonderful year for nettles!!! We’ve been harvesting and eating them like crazy! What an incredible joy it is to spend the afternoon crouching under the juniper and oaks, soaking in Spring’s sweet sunshine and the glorious green magic of the nettle plants, who seem to be growing taller with every moment that passes by! As soon as we get enough for a giant potful, we go for a splash and a dunk in the crisp cold river, and then plan the evening meal all refreshed! We’ve been cooking up the nettles over the fire, sometimes outdoors, or inside on the wood cookstove when it’s too windy. Some of the cooked nettles get bagged up to go to Ryan’s freezer, and many others get eaten!

Right now, here in the canyon, it’s the ultimate time to harvest. The plants are incredibly abundant and about 6-8 inches tall. At this height, the stalks are still tender enough to enjoy as well as the beautiful leaves, and can even be used in the following very tasty dip. I’ve been using a hand blender to make sure the stalks are thoroughly ground up. Here’s the recipe for you, from that eternally-in-progress cookbook of mine!

nettleflower.jpgNettle (or Spinach) Yogurt Dip
(Serves 2 or more)

1 cup of steamed nettles (or cooked spinach)
3/4-1 cup yogurt (or goat milk yogurt, or a mixture of yogurt and cream cheese, or sour cream and soft goat cheese!)
4 to 6 cloves of garlic, minced
Lemon juice, fresh, to taste
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Steam the nettles or spinach leaves until they’re tender, usually about 15-20 minutes. Place the nettles with the yogurt in a bowl and blend well with a fork, or mash in a mortar with a pestle. It’s hard to get spinach soft enough to blend with a fork, so you might want to use a blender or a food mill. Cook the garlic over low heat in a buttered skillet until barely golden. Add the garlic, lemon juice, salt and pepper. After working everything together, taste and adjust salt, pepper, and lemon juice to your taste.

This morning we had the most delicious breakfast! I had made a double batch of nettle dip some days ago, and remembered a wonderful-looking recipe in Sandoor Katz’s incredible book Wild Fermentation. He uses homemade kefir in making these great savory pancakes called Drawoe Kura, from Tibet. I thought, how great these would be made with nettle dip instead of kefir! We ate them this morning with some extra nettle dip and melted butter, a bit of warmed-up leftover red wine-braised chicken, with a mug of today’s freshly boiled nettles in their cooking water served on the side. Homemade chutney and some kalamata olives were very nice with all of that, too, but entirely optional! Rhiannon was enjoying her breakfast so much she said wistfully, “I wish I could eat this forever”.

Savory Buckwheat Cakes with Nettle Dip:

1 cup Nettle Dip (or yogurt or kefir)
1 cup buckwheat flour
1/4 tsp. salt
1 cup water
olive oil, for cooking

nettlepot.jpgWith a whisk or a fork, combine all ingredients. Heat a large skillet to medium-high, and pour about a tablespoon of oil in the pan. (I used some homemade Rosemary Oil). Ladle a small amount of batter in three or four places in the pan, for small pancakes. Let brown on one side before flipping and browing on the next. Serve with butter and more Nettle Dip, some fresh ground pepper, and whatever else you might fancy. Enjoy!

P.S.

If you think you don’t have a nearby Stinging Nettle patch look again, they’re more common than you probably think! Try searching for them in shady spots near a river or where there’s moisture. In the event that there really isn’t any in your area spinach makes a good substitute.

-Love, Loba

Apr 02 2009
Spring Nettles & Cooking - By Rhiannon Cadhla Hardin (age 8.7)

Published by Anima under Little Rhiannon’s Wisdom

resoluterhiannon-sm.jpgSpring Nettles!!!
This is the best nettles year we’ve since I’ve been here. We are hurrying to pick them before they get tough, taller, (which makes them harder to pick) and get seeds. There has been a lot of people coming and going so it’s a bit hard to keep a routine of picking nettles every day.:) We try to get at least a bag full of nettles every day. We can make all kinds of delicious things with nettles. Not to long ago we made nettles dip pan cakes! It was soooooooooooo good, if it hadn’t been for my belly reminding me not to eat to much I would have ate them all. I also wrote a Report on nettles:

Nettles are a wonderful plant full of nutrition and many other things. I will tell you about its medicinal properties and food uses. The nettles botanical name is Urtica dioica. Nettles contain formic acid, histamine, acetylcholine, vitamins A and C, minerals and other things. Nettles are highly nutritious, high in vitamins and minerals, particularly iron, silica and potassium, and have been used for centuries as a nourishing tonic for weakness and debility and other things. Nettle juice applied to the skin relieves bites and stings, including nettle sting. The stinging hairs of the fresh nettle contain formic acid and histamine and have been used traditionally to stimulate the circulation and relieve arthritiis and other things. It blooms early to mid spring. We love picking them, especially when they’re little. We like to make nettle dip, and not too long ago we made nettle quiche. This is the very best nettle year we’ve had since I’ve been in New Mexico. Nettles are good in many ways. You can make nettle soup or have plain nettles on the side with butter and salt. Picking nettles is one the jobs I really like! I try to get at least a bag full every day. Its a lot faster if you wear gloves when you’re picking them and if you don’t ow! Though there is ways you can pick them with out gloves and not get stung. It’s so nice to think of sitting on a stool eating warm nettle soup on a winters day. Yum! They also are very pretty! I love taking a rest some times and looking at the nettles. How beautiful you are!

I hope this inspires you to use nettles in many ways. Now that you know nettles can be used both in medicine and food.

rhiannonswimcake1.jpgSpring cooking!
I have been writeing a cook book, like my Mama Loba. I’m very excited one of the recipes that I’ve made goes like this:

Golden Cookie Tart Crust:

1 1/2 cups spelt flour
1/2 cup melted butter or oil
1 egg
3 Tbs. brown sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. baking powder
For Anise Cinnamon Crust- add 1 tsp.
grated ornge peel, 1/4 tsp. anise extract,
1 heaping 1/2 tsp. cinnamon.

Other Optional Additions:
lemon peel
fresh or dried ginger
cocoa powder chocolate chips
kahlua
crystalized ginger
honey
coconut flour.
mix the wet things in first then add the dry things.
form in to cookies and put on a greased cookie sheet.
Then put in a 350 degree oven for about 10 minuets.

Take out and enjoy.

I hope you all are inspired to use and enjoy the recipe. Goodbye for now! I’m off to my treehouse…

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