Posts Tagged ‘detox’

Take advantage of the beautiful weather and take your family on a picnic or hike in the woods. Right now in my neck of the woods I can find Common Elderberry with both the flower and fruit! The fruit is early, I’ll see them more abundant in May.

Interestingly, the Elderberry is a member of the honeysuckle family. You will find it along creeks and rivers. Mostly damp areas. They get pretty big – about 13 feet tall. The tiny white flowers and the dark purple tiny berries are both edible. Right now is a great time for them – I can pluck the flowers and make a nice tea and have a handful of berries with my tea!  The berries have potassium, calcium, beta carotene and vitamin C. Yes, having a snack from the Elderberry bush is a healthy thing.

Some sources say that too much of the berry raw is not a good thing but that the taste improves with drying. I’ve never eaten a huge amount in one sitting – they aren’t that sweet. But I do like to dry them in my dehydrator and add them to trailmix and granola. For the cooked fooders out there, throw a handful of the berries in your pancake batter or bake them in muffins.

From the book “Identifying & Havesting Edible and Medicinal Plants” (see below) they offer that an infusion of the flowers (steep them like making tea)cleanses the skin and sooths sunburns and because of the bioflavinoid content, it strengthens the capillaires. You can even steep the flowers in oil to make a soothing massage lotion that soothes burns and rashes. There is a multitude of uses for this flower. There are usually several bushes together, but if there aren’t, always leave some flowers or they won’t make berries and the birds will be disappointed. The lacey clusters are beautiful close up – the flower being less than a quarter inch wide.

TEA: Gather elder flowers when in full bloom. You may use them fresh or spread them out on some cloth or screen and let them air dry. When they are completely dry store them in a jar and use like you would any dried tea. 4 tablespoons dried elderflower to 1 quart water. Good hot or iced!

The common Elderberry DOES NOT have thorns. If you find one with thorns or reddish fruit – don’t eat them, they aren’t poisonous but they may make you sick.

Get out there and try to find some. Learning about wild edibles comes from finding one plant at a time and using it some how. Keep track of it throughout the year to learn what the plant looks like during the different seasons. Before you know it, you begin to build a knowledge base of what is out in your part of your world and you become more connected to the earth. And if you ever get lost in the woods…well, you’ll be the one that is perfectly fine and healthy.

(drawing above is charcoal and color pencil, 15×23 - Mockingbird on Elderberry by me)

Here are some common elderberries that a bird has been eating on the left. And on the right is a nice full head of green-soon to be ripe berries.

Today I took my favorite collapsible bucket to the park for my walk. It was a beautiful day and the woods were full of wild onions. The plantain was particularly beautiful as well, so I picked a bunch of that as well. I’ll be using the plantain in my green smoothies this week. (All parts of Plantain can be  used and is often used medicinally. Rub/crush the leaves and put them on insect bites for itch relief and healing.) The wild onion I gathered for my Spring Fling Corn Chowder recipe I made this evening.

EDIBLE WEEDS are a great source of extra nutrition. The more you learn about edible wild plants, the more you will be dumbfounded by why so much money is spent on putting poisons in the yards to be rid of the “pesky plants.”

DO YOU KNOW WHY WEEDS are so hard to get rid of in your yard? Most have really long roots! The roots pass up the upper depleted soil and reach way down to where the soil is still packed full of nutrients. And this is why the edible varieties are super nutritious and we shouldn’t pass up the opportunity to add edible wild plants to our daily raw and live food diets. Dr. Ann Wigmore always added common Plantain and Lambs Quarters to her famous “Energy Soup.”

I don’t know when I first became interested in learning all about “wild edibles.” It must have been since I was a kid spending weekends in the mountains in Colorado. We always sought out the wild raspberries and I remember thinking how cool it was that I could help myself to food fresh from the woods.

I feel fortunate that I grew up with parents that always planted a vegetable garden by our home. This trained my palate early on to the awesome flavors of “ripened on the vine” food.

Fresh ripe carrots right out of the ground, washed off with the garden hose and desperately sweet strawberries plucked ripe from the vine – there is nothing compared to that. My aunt and uncle grew beautiful concord grapes that spanned the length of the yard. The scent was amazing, I can still conjure it in my mind. Another aunt that had a huge cherry tree in her front yard. My dad made awesome cherry pies from that tree.

So I guess the gifts of the earths garden have always been a part of my life – and now I am teaching myself more in depth about wild edibles.

Plantain and wild onion

Please note:There are more edible wild plants than there are toxic ones – but please don’t try any if you aren’t absolutely sure is an edible one. And there are some that are edible but have poisonous “look-alikes.” And also, some parts of a plant may be edible, while another part is not. Read some books, take a class, research the Internet. Find out what’s in your yard and parks. Three of my favorite books are:

1. Edible Wild Plants – A North American Field Guide by Thomas Elias and Peter Dykeman. Very good, color photos, has a “seasonal” guide so you know whats in season and where.

2.The Forager’s Harvest – A Guide to Identifying, Harvesting and Perparing Edible Wild Plants by Samuel Thayer. His website ForagersHarvest.com has  articles and resources.

3. Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants in Wild (and not so wild) Places by Wildman Steve Brill with Evelyn Dean. Larger format book with illustrations. I usually don’t care for foraging books to be illustrated – photos do a better job for identification. But this one is pretty good and very descriptive. This book even includes recipes!

Fasting Day 3 – Feel great, not hungry. When you fast, you take a break from all forms of toxins physical and non-physical, that your body usually has to deal with on some level. I am recalling memories of earlier fasts/feasts – how things change in and around you. You really do move inward. I don’t just fast from food – I’m finding that I begin to “fast” from things in my life that I know will give me stress. I don’t watch the news for example. I meditate deeper and longer. I listen to more soothing music. (I just bought ‘Edgar Cayce’s Sounds for Meditation’ CD from A.R.E. Very interesting, nice.)
Overall, I feel my body has a lot less toxins than it did a few years ago. I eat mostly raw and make the effort to reduce the toxic load to my body daily. It had become habit for me and I forget how different my lifestyle has become until my dad comes to visit.
He complains about me not having “real” soap, or “real” toothpaste. I don’t have “real” deodorant either. He has to live without a microwave while he is here too. I have glass food containers, having little by little purchased glass and donated the plasticware. I stick to natural fabrics (cotton, hemp etc).
It has been difficult at times to find clothing that is cotton and still “business” like. Most of it is too casual and sloppy for “work” clothes. Mostly I’ve been successful at finding natural fabrics from Ralph Lauren – finding suit jackets and tank tops that serve for business attire.

I’ll start posting some of my natural recipes (lotions, facial scrubs, soap, toothpaste, household cleansers…) but for now, here is a book recommendation for soap making. This was my first soap making book – I’ve purchased more complicated ones after this, but always came back to this because its so simple and I have never ruined a batch of soap using their base recipes. I purchase pure essential oils in bulk online (mostly from Snowdriftfarm.com - nice site, lots to learn).

The Soap Book: Simple Herbal Recipes by Sandy Maine. I was amazed at the bad reviews of the book on Amazon. The bad ones all sounded like they critiqued the book without making any of the recipes. They complained that it didn’t go into lye calculations and superfatting and that the amounts of essential oil was too high and too expensive and that there was only one recipe.

I think they want soap making to be complicated and it doesn’t have to be! I have read lots of info about what to do with ruined soap batches (shave it and use it in your laundry) – With this book, I have never ruined a batch of soap. I make lovely bars and have sold them at gift shops and made a profit – yes using only pure essential oils, extra virgin olive oils, coconut oil etc. The good stuff – that costs a bit more. That’s the point of making your own products so you don’t have to buy the processed stuff that has cheap ingredients. I age the bars, they are hard and they last a long time in the shower – the coconut oil makes them lather very nicely!

So keep it simple, try the recipes in the book – make them for your friends and family and coworkers. They make great gifts.

Pay attention to what you put on your body – it adds up. Your body has to continuously clean up those toxins – give it a break.