Be Your Own Herbal Expert - Pt 5

Posted on July 3, 2008 in Health by UHC

Herbal
medicine is the medicine of the people. It is simple, safe, effective, and
free. Our ancestors used - and our neighbors around the world still use - plant
medicines for healing and health maintenance. It’s easy. You can do it too, and
you don’t need a degree or any special training. Ancient memories arise in you
when you begin to use herbal medicine - memories which keep you safe and fill
you with delight. These lessons are designed to nourish and activate your inner
herbalist so you can be your own herbal expert.

In
our first session, we learned how to “listen” to the messages of
plant’s tastes. In session two, we learned about simples and how to make
effective water-based herbal remedies. The third session helped us distinguish
safe nourishing and tonifying herbs from the more dangerous stimulating and
sedating herbs. Our fourth session focused on poisons in herbs and herbal
tinctures, which we made and then collected into an Herbal Medicine Chest.

 

In
this, our fifth session, we will find out how to help ourselves and our
families with herbal vinegars, one of the green blessings of the Wise Woman Way.

 

Why Use Herbal Vinegars?

Herbal
vinegars are an unstoppable combination: they marry the healing and nutritional
properties of apple cider vinegar with the mineral and antioxidant richness of
health-protective green herbs and wild roots. Herbal vinegars are tasty
medicine, enriching and enlivening our food while building health from the
inside out.

 

Herbal
vinegars are far better for the bones and the heart than soy beverages. They
have a reputation for banishing grey hair and wrinkles. Sprayed in the armpits,
herbal vinegars are highly effective deodorants. As a hair rinse (try rosemary
or lavender vinegar) they add luster and eliminate split ends.

 

Anything
vinegar can do, including clean the kitchen, herbal vinegars can do better.

Vinegars Seek Minerals

Minerals
are important for the health and proper functioning of our bones, our heart and
blood vessels, our nerves, our brain (especially memory), our immune system,
and our hormonal glands. No wonder lack of minerals can lead to chronic
problems and getting more can make a big difference in health in a few weeks.
One of the best ways to get more minerals - besides drinking nourishing herbal
infusions and eating well-cooked leafy greens - is to use herbal vinegars.

Vinegar & Your Bones

It
is not true that ingesting vinegar will erode your bones. Adding vinegar to
your food actually helps build bones because it frees up minerals from the
vegetables you eat and increases the ability of the stomach to digest minerals.
Adding a splash of vinegar to cooked greens is a classic trick of old ladies
who want to be spry and flexible when they’re ancient old ladies. (Maybe your
granny already taught you this?) In fact, a spoonful of vinegar on your
broccoli or kale or dandelion greens increases the calcium you get by
one-third. All by itself, apple cider vinegar is said to help build bones; when
enriched with minerals from herbs, I think of it as better than calcium pills.

Vinegar & Candida

Some
people worry that eating vinegar will upset the balance of gut flora and
contribute to an overgrowth of candida yeast in the intestines. Some people
have been told to avoid vinegar altogether. My experience has led me to believe
that herbal vinegars help heal those with candida overgrowth, perhaps because
they’re so mineral rich. I’ve worked with women who have suffered for years and
kept to a strict “anti-candida” diet with little improvement, and
seen them get better fast when they add nourishing herbal vinegars (and
fermented foods such as sauerkraut, miso, and yogurt) to their diets.

Making Herbal Vinegars

Fill
any size jar with fresh-cut aromatic herbs: leaves, stalks, flowers, fruits,
roots, and even nuts can be used. For best results and highest mineral content,
be sure the jar is well filled and chop the herb finely.

 

Pour
room-temperature vinegar into the jar until it is full. Cover jar: A plastic
screw-on lid, several layers of plastic or wax paper held on with a rubber
band, or a cork are the best covers. Avoid metal lids - or protect them well
with plastic - as vinegar will corrode them.

 

Label
the jar with the name of the herb and the date. Put it some place away from
direct sunlight, though it doesn’t have to be in the dark, and someplace that
isn’t too hot, but not too cold either. A kitchen cupboard is fine, but choose
one that you open a lot so you remember to use your vinegar, which will be ready
in six weeks.

 

You
can decant your vinegar into a beautiful serving container, or use it right
from the jar you made it in.

 

Which
Vinegar?

 

I
use regular pasteurized apple cider vinegar from the supermarket as the
menstrum for my herbal vinegars. I avoid white vinegar. Malt vinegar, rice
vinegar, and wine vinegar can be used but they are more expensive and may
overpower the flavor of the herbs.

 

Apple
cider vinegar has been used as a health-giving agent for centuries.
Hippocrates, father of medicine, is said to have used only two remedies: honey
and apple cider vinegar. Some of the many benefits of apple cider vinegar
include: better digestion, reduction of cholesterol, improvements in blood
pressure, prevention/care of osteoporosis, normalization of thyroid/metabolic
functioning, possible reduction of cancer risk, and lessening of wrinkles and
grey hair.

 

Notes
for Herbal Vinegar Makers

• Collect jars of different sizes for your vinegars. I
  especially like baby food jars, mustard jars, olive jars, peanut butter jars
  and individual juice jars. Look for plastic lids.
• The wider the mouth of the jar, the easier it will be
  to remove the plant material when you’re done.
• Always fill jar to the top with plant material and
  vinegar; never fill a jar only part way.
• Really fill the jar. This will take far more herb or
  root than you would think. How much? With leaves and stems, make a comfortable
  mattress for a fairy: not too tight; not too loose. With roots, fill your jar
  to within a thumb’s width of the top.
• After decanting your vinegar into a beautiful jar,
  add a spring of whole herb. Pretty.

My Favorite Herbal Vinegar

Pick the needles of white pine on a sunny day. Make herbal
vinegar with them. Inhale deeply the scent of the forest. I call this my
“homemade balsamic vinegar.”

Using Your Vinegars

• Herbal vinegars taste so good,
  you’ll want to use them frequently. Regular use boosts the nutrient level of
  your diet with very little effort and virtually no expense.
• Pour a spoonful or more on beans and grains as a
  condiment.
• Use them in salad dressings.
• Add them to cooked greens.
• Season stir-fries with them.
• Look for soups that are vinegar friendly, like
  borscht.
• Substitute herbal vinegar for plain vinegar in any
  recipe.
• Put a big spoonful in a glass of water and drink it.
  Try it sweetened with blackstrap molasses for a real mineral jolt. Many older
  women swear this “coffee substitute” prevents and eases their
  arthritic pains.

 

Coming Up

In our next sessions we will learn
more about herbal medicine making, with a focus on oils, explore the difference
between fixing disease and promoting health, learn how to apply the three
traditions of healing, and how to take charge of our own health care with the
six steps of healing.

Experiment Number One

Test vinegar’s ability to absorb minerals. Put a fresh
bone in a jar and completely cover it with vinegar. What happens? Does the bone
become pliable and rubbery? How long does it take? Will eating vinegar dissolve
your bones? Only if you take off your skin and sit in it for weeks!

Experiment Number Two

Make eggshell vinegar. Fill a jar
one-quarter full of vinegar. Drop crushed eggshell into it. What happens? Does
the vinegar foam? How long does it take? Eggshells are exceptionally rich in
bone-building minerals. Can you taste the calcium in this vinegar? Add some
eggshell to your other vinegars if you wish to increase their ability to keep
your bones strong.

Experiment Number Three

Make
four or more vinegars with the same plant, using different types of vinegar,
including both pasteurized and unpasteurized apple cider vinegar. (For the
others, use rice vinegar, malt vinegar, wine vinegar, or even white vinegar,
but not umeboshi vinegar.)

 

Taste
your vinegars daily for a week, then weekly for five more weeks. You may, if
you wish, decant some of your vinegars for use after six weeks. But you may
also wish to keep observing them as they age (for years, if you wish). I have
some vinegars which are more than thirty years old and still in good shape.
Note which stay edible the longest, and what happens to those that become
inedible.

Experiment Number Four

Buy a quart or more of
unpasteurized apple cider vinegar. Use two cups to make several small herbal
vinegars: one with roots, one with leaves, and one with flowers. Boil the other
two cups. Make one herbal vinegar with the boiling hot vinegar. Make another
with the boiled vinegar after it has cooled. Continue as in experiment number
three.   

Further study

1.           Redo experiment number two using different kinds of
eggshells - white ones and brown ones, store-bought and farm-bought, from caged
birds and free-range birds. Can you see any differences? Taste or smell any
differences?

2.            
Make vinegars at different times of the year and
compare them.

 

Advanced work

• Unpasteurized vinegar can form a “mother.”
  In a jar filled with herb and vinegar, the vinegar mother usually grows across
  the top of the herb, and looking rather like a damp, thin pancake. Kombucha is
  a vinegar mother. Does your local health food store sell mothers? Kombucha?
  What is a vinegar mother? Is it harmful?
• What is an ionic form of a mineral?
• What is a mineral salt?
• How do our bodies take up and utilize minerals?

 

Plants
That Make Exceptionally Good-Tasting Herbal Vinegars

Apple mint (Mentha sp.) leaves, stalks
Bee balm (Monarda didyma)
flowers, leaves, stalks
Bergamot (Monarda sp.) flowers,
leaves, stalks
Burdock (Arctium lappa) roots
Catnip (Nepeta cataria) leaves,
stalks
Chicory (Cichorium intybus)
leaves, roots
Chives and especially chive blossoms
Dandelion (Taraxacum off.) flower
buds, leaves, roots
Dill (Anethum graveolens) herb,
seeds
Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare)
herb, seeds
Garlic (Allium sativum) bulbs,
greens, flowers
Garlic mustard (Alliaria officinalis)
leaves and roots
Goldenrod (Solidago sp.)
flowers
Ginger (Zingiber off.) and Wild
ginger (Asarum canadensis) roots
Lavender (Lavendula sp.)
flowers, leaves
Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris)
new growth leaves and roots
Orange mint (Mentha sp.)
leaves, stalks
Orange peel, organic only
Peppermint (Mentha piperata and etc.) leaves,
stalks
Perilla (Shiso) (Agastache)
leaves, stalks
Rosemary (Rosmarinus off.)
leaves, stalks
Spearmint (Mentha spicata)
leaves, stalks
Thyme (Thymus sp.) leaves,
stalks
White pine (Pinus strobus)
needles
Yarrow (Achilllea millifolium)
flowers and leaves

 

Weedy
Herbal Calcium Supplement

 

Use one or more of the following plants to make an herbal vinegar that
can reverse and counter osteoporosis. Dose is 2-4 tablespoons daily.

Amaranth (Amaranthus retroflexus)
leaves
Cabbage leaves
Chickweed (Stellaria media)
whole herb
Comfrey (Symphytum officinalis)
leaves
Cronewort/Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris)
young leaves
Dandelion (Taraxacum off.)
leaves and root
Kale leaves
Lambsquarter (Chenopodium album)
leaves
Mallow (Malva neglecta) leaves
Mint leaves of all sorts, especially sage, motherwort, lemon balm, lavender,
peppermint
Nettle (Urtica dioica) leaves
Parsley (Petroselinum sativum)
leaves
Plantain (Plantago majus)
leaves
Raspberry (Rubus species)
leaves
Red clover (Trifolium pratense)
blossoms
Violet (Viola odorata) leaves
Yellow dock (Rumex crispus and
other species) roots

 

Herbal
Vinegars Where You Eat the Pickled Plants Too

 

Burdock
Chicory
Dandelion
Purslane
Yellow Dock
Rosehips
Raspberries/blackberries

 

Study with Susun Weed in the convenience of your home!
Choose from three Correspondence Courses: Green Allies, Spirit &
Practice of the Wise Woman Tradition, and Green Witch - includes
audio/video tapes, books, assignments, special mailings, plus personal
time.  Learn more at , NY 12498Fax:  1-845-246-8081

About the author

Tags: ancient memories, apple cider vinegar, armpits, building health, deodorants, fifth session, grey hair, hair rinse, health maintenance, herbal medicine chest, herbal remedies, herbal tinctures, herbalist, luster, plant medicines, poisons, richness, split ends, wild roots, wise woman

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