Almanac.com Down Home Blog

Making an Herbal Tincture

Margaret Boyles — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 12:48:20 +0000

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Down Home

Last week I came across some Internet sites about herb-based first-aid kits.

In addition to standard items such as scissors, bandages, and sterile gauze pads, most sites recommended packaged dried herbs for tea, a collection of essential oils, herbal creams and salves and a few alcohol tinctures.

Serendipitously, although I’m a teetotaler, I was heading for town that day to buy a bottle of vodka to make a few tinctures to supplement my own first-aid supplies. Herbal tinctures are really easy to make.

A traditional herbal tincture is made by steeping herbs in high-proof ethyl alcohol (sometimes vinegar) to extract and concentrate their medicinal constituents—molecules that plants have manufactured for self-protection and that we humans expropriate for our own medicinal use.

Ethyl alcohol tinctures are generally intended for internal use. Herbs tinctured in rubbing alcohol (isopropyl), witch hazel, or oil are called liniments, and are intended for external use only.

Although you can tincture leaves or needles, flowers, roots, and barks, either fresh or dried, I make mine mostly from fresh leaves harvested from my gardens, lawns and nearby wild places. Today, I'm gathering the wild yarrow that's just begun to flower, the plantain running amok on the lawn, and the lemon balm beckoning from the herb garden.

The advantages of tinctures

Alcohol extracts and concentrates more of the valuable medicinal compounds than water extracts (e.g., teas, infusions, tisanes).
Alcohol tinctures made with at least 80-proof ethanol don’t spoil, and they maintain their potency for a long time if properly stored. (Those made with wine or vinegar won’t extract as many active phytocompounds, and they won’t last as long.)
Tinctures are portable and easy to tuck into a purse or traveling bag.

Before you start

You’ll need to learn something about how, why, when, to use a particular plant tincture, and in what dose. Read books and articles, attend workshops, consult with local herbalists.
You need to be 100 percent certain you’ve properly identified the plant you plan to use. Do invest in some wild-plant field guides or join one of the local wild-plant identification workshops offered in your area.
Tincture only those plants you know haven’t been treated with pesticides.
Don’t use plants collected around the edges of commercially farmed fields or close to roadsides.

What you’ll need

The plant parts you plan to tincture. To avoid diluting the alcohol with water, don’t wash them. (Roots are the exception; you may need to rinse or even scrub them lightly before chopping.) If the plant parts are already wet, lay them out and blot gently with a clean towel to dry them off. Discard any diseased or damaged material.
A bottle of 80-proof (or higher) ethyl alcohol. Many herbalists prefer vodka, because it’s relatively colorless, tasteless and odorless.
A glass jar with a tight lid. You don’t need large bottles for making an alcohol tincture; a tincture is a potent plant medicine administered only a few drops at a time. Start with small containers such as pint canning jars or empty peanut-butter or jam jars.
Some small, dark bottles for storing the decanted tincture(s). Storing them in the dark helps protect their potency.

A simple process

Chop large leaves, flowers, or roots; leave delicate leaves and flowers whole. Then fill the glass jar loosely with the plant material, and add enough alcohol to cover the plant materials. Seal the jar tightly.

Label and date the jar. Include the plant parts tinctured and the type of alcohol used. Set the jar in a cool, dark place for a month or longer, shaking or stirring occasionally and adding more alcohol if needed to keep the plant materials covered.

Strain the tincture over a clean cheesecloth into a glass or ceramic container twisting the cloth to remove as much of the tincture as possible. Funnel the tincture into dark glass bottles and cap (or cork) tightly. Label and date each tincture and store in a cool, dark place.

You can increase the concentration of a tincture by straining out the original plant materials and adding fresh material.

Caveats

Like any healing agent, herbal remedies in any form can pack a lot of power, which includes adverse reactions. Learn as much as possible about the herb you’re using before you try it. Your homemade tinctures don’t offer a standard “dose.” Begin with a new tincture by trying a few drops in warm water or tea, and work up slowly until you experience the desired results.

If you’re pregnant, nursing, taking prescription medicine, or suffering from a chronic illness, don’t start on an herbal remedy without consulting a health professional. Always include your use of herbs in the information you provide to your medical and dental professionals.

Photo: Chopping herbs for tincture, by Snoobs, Some rights reserved.

Home Economics? Bring it On!

Margaret Boyles — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 13:01:38 +0000

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Down Home

Ironically, the day I began writing this post, our local paper featured a front-page story titled, “The end of home ec.”

It explained that home economics courses (now called “family and consumer sciences”) were on the verge of elimination due to changes in the state’s minimum education standards.

Did you know our very word economy comes from two Greek words that mean household and stewardship?

The field of inquiry, scholarship, and practice called “home economics” picked up a bad reputation as women moved out of the home into the workforce en masse during the late 1960s and 1970s.

Much of the unpaid work that had been the province of the home for centuries—cooking, laundry, cleaning, caring for children and elders—gradually got outsourced to the market economy. Some economists say this artificially inflated the “economic growth” of the era, as households began paying cash for what had done in the unpaid (and invisible) economy of the home.

I don’t yearn for the old days of “stitch & stir” in the girls-only home-ec classrooms of yesteryear, and I’ve always felt cool to the concept of “consumer sciences.” But I do yearn for a society that accords deep respect and value to the unpaid labor and productivity of the American household. And I think we’re heading back in that direction.

Valuing unpaid labor as essential and economic

Households create other forms of essential economic value, too, more difficult to outsource. They teach children their native language, transmit culture and values, and shape a child’s understanding of the world and of human relationships.

Recent research by the Pew Research report reported that women are the sole or primary breadwinners in 40 percent of the nation’s households. They bear the children, still take on the lion’s share of housework, and the childcare and eldercare. Families are stretched to their limits.

Previous research has shown that families currently provide about 70 percent of eldercare in the United States. Nearly half of American adults are currently involved in some level of unpaid eldercare, a trend that will continue as the Boomer generation ages.

The return of home economics

Demographers have predicted that the increasing caregiving roles in coming decades, combined with a loss of many traditional paying jobs, will transform the American family and the ways in which families interact with the marketplace.

They forecast more three-generation households, more in-home self-employment, more single-income households, more job-sharing, and more part-time work to accommodate the dual demands of childcare and eldercare.

They forecast more home economics! I’m defining home economics as the value of what individuals and families, aided by various support networks, make or do for their own direct use.

These new households of necessity will have less money to spend on eating out, vacationing away from home, and new cars and appliances. But they will be more in the market for tools and technologies that enable new forms of household production.

The sort of home economics I envision wouldn’t be so much taught as widely demonstrated and promoted. It would become a central feature of our private lives and public policies. It wouldn’t be relegated to classrooms. It would intertwine with both the market and non-profit economies in new and fascinating ways. It will invite new scholarship and new forms of entrepreneurship.

And as the home economics of earlier times adopted sewing machines, electric stoves, and dish washers and clothes dryers, the new home ec will employ and be supported by a variety of new technologies, as well as a large dose of community-wide collaborations.

Emerging signs of the new home ec

Maker culture promises to transform public libraries, schools, museums, health promotion centers, academic research institutions, and especially homes, into centers of production rather than consumption.
So called makerspaces are "collaborative learning environments where people come together to share materials and learn new skills, working from a mindset of community partnership, collaboration, and creation." The Maker Movement has spread rapidly around the world. You’ll be hearing a lot more about it.
Repair cafes are nonprofit, often volunteer-run spaces outfitted with tools, where people bring broken items and learn to fix them. Here’s a map of this growing movement, which started in the Netherlands.
Science shops are “small entities that carry out scientific research in a wide range of disciplines, responding to the local citizenry’s needs for expertise and knowledge – usually free of charge." Burgeoning throughout Europe, the idea has begun to grow throughout the world, including the U.S.
Fab labs (fabrication laboratories) are small-scale workshops offering (personal) digital fabrication. Like science shops maker-spaces and and repair cafes, they offer collaborative learning environments, where participants learn by making, inventing, repairing at little or no cost.
Many fab labs feature access to 3-D printers. As these devices become more common and less expensive, designers say they will become ubiquitous in homes, spawning a revolution in creating and making, just as home computing devices have transformed learning and communicating.
Cooking, sewing, food gardening, carpentry? Oh yes! I think we’ve already seen a sharp turn back toward these classic forms of home production, in some cases dramatically changed by new tools and the advent of online collaborative learning. They seem so ho-hum and old-fashioned, you just don’t hear so much about them in the daily news.

Photo: Home economics, 1917, by doc1. Some rights reserved.

Is That a Flower in My Soup?

Margaret Boyles — Sun, 26 May 2013 18:47:38 +0000

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Down Home

The world has burst into bloom. The forsythia and daffodils have faded, but azaleas, lilacs, flowering quince, cherry and apple trees (both wild and cultivated), the invasive but sweet-scented autumn olive, dandelion, lawn violets and many more have exploded with color and fragrance.

For centuries, humans have foraged or cultivated flowers and flower buds for food, drink, and medicine. Think broccoli, cauliflower, and artichoke, stuffed or stir-fried squash blossoms dill-flower spiked pickles, chamomile and jasmine tea.

But did you know that the flowers of hundreds of common wild and cultivated plants are edible? Dressing up your soups, salads, drinks, and desserts with buds and flowers will add color, diversity, and new flavor to your meals. Adventurous folks might also want to explore some of the traditional medicinal uses of common flowers.

When preparing most flowers (exceptions: squash, violets, and nasturtiums) for food or beverage, use only the petals for best flavor. Remove the sepals, as well as the pistils and stamens. In case you’ve forgotten your flower anatomy, here’s help. Please read the caveats below before you begin.

A few of my favorites

Nasturtium sits at the top of my list. It’s easy to grow from seed, indoors or out, and every above-ground part is edible. Its buds and delicate, voluptuous blossoms spice up a bland salad or cooked vegetable platter. Nasturtium leaves and flowers are rich in antioxidant and antiinflammatory compounds, and have a long history of medicinal use in indigenous cultures for urinary-tract, cardiovascular, and respiratory disorders. Extracts of this cabbage-family relative are currently under investigation as possible treatments for many diseases, including antibiotic-resistant infections.

Daylily Harvested fresh, the plump buds and meaty flowers of this common garden plant are delicious sauteed in a little oil or butter, then seasoned with salt and pepper. Some people stuff the just-opened blossom with a favorite stuffing mix, then saute the stuffed flowers in a little oil or poach them in broth. Use only freshly harvested buds/flowers.
Violets I’ve already written about my love of the irrepressible wild violets that pop up all over my lawns and gardens. Give it a read, and tend your lawn violets with care!
Calendula A lovely and easy-to-grow annual flower, calendula petals will add color and spice to just about any cooked or fresh dish. Carefully remove the petals and toss them into salad, stir-fries, or your favorite rice dishes.
Calendula flowers are renowned for skin care and healing. You’ll find calendula listed as an ingredient in many high-end skincare products and healing creams.

Here’s a nice recipe for homemade calendula oil or cream: Pull the petals from enough dried or fresh calendula blossoms to give you a cup. Add petals to a cup of olive oil in a large glass jar with a lid; seal and leave in a sunny window or outside for a week or two. After straining out the petals, you can use the oil as is, or heat it in a double boiler with ¼ cup of melted beeswax to make a spreadable cream.

Roses The darker-colored, more aromatic the variety the more flavor it will have. Strew rose petals across a fresh salad, brew them into tea, or use the entire blossoms to decorate a cake.
Sunflowers Carefully separate the petals and sprinkle them into salads. For a real treat, harvest the unopened buds, remove the sepals, and steam the buds until tender. Meaty and filling, they taste like artichoke. Mmm!
Chamomile Dried or fresh, chamomile tea is renowned as a safe and gentle calming and sleep-promoting agent. It’s readily available in stores (buy flowers in bulk), and easy to grow in the home garden. Plus, take a gander at this review of the traditional medicinal uses of chamomile and current investigation of the herb as serious medicine.

Here’s a longer list of edible flowers. Have fun!

Some caveats

Never eat a flower you can’t identify with absolute certainty and know to be safe.
Don’t eat commercially grown flowers or flowers that came from a florist; they could have been sprayed.
Don’t forage wild flowers on treated lawns or along well-traveled roadways (possibility of chemical contamination).
Introduce a new edible flower or floral tea slowly and gradually, especially if you have a serious ragweed or other pollen allergy. On your first try, take a few deep sniffs, then only a bite or two.
Because flowers may contain powerful phytocompounds (which confer their healing virtues, as well as their flavors and colors), check with your healthcare professional before eating edible flowers if you’re pregnant or taking prescription drugs.

Too Frugal?

Margaret Boyles — Sun, 19 May 2013 15:09:05 +0000

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Down Home

Arriving for an out-of-town funeral a couple of weeks ago, I parked my car, stepped out to walk the short distance to the church.

It felt as if I had something on the bottom of my shoe, and when I pull it off to look, I saw that the rubber sole was badly cracked and crumbling.

I attempted a fix by ducking into the church basement and connecting with a man who supplied me with rolls of electrical tape and duct tape. But a yard of tape couldn't remedy the damage. The soles were too far gone. I left crumbs of black rubber in the aisle and in the pew, and attended the reception downstairs in stocking feet.

It never occurred to me to check the soles before I headed out, so I had no idea they were in such bad shape. I’d bought them at a thrift store at least a decade ago and worn them hundreds of times. They were the most comfortable shoes I’ve ever owned, supple black leather uppers and low-heeled, dense rubber soles—my go-to pair for graduations, funerals, and town meetings.

Growing up frugal

I learned my frugal habits from my mother. She was joyously and creatively thrifty in every respect. I still get a good laugh whenever I recall how she got me through high school and college with a single pair of dress shoes and a few cans of spray paint.

I sailed through proms and other formal dances, concerts, weddings—even made an appearance as a bridesmaid—in those shoes. Mom just sprayed them to match each new outfit, and they always looked great. At each outing, however, I prayed I’d make it home before the cracks began to show. After all, the paint was intended for things like deck railings and furniture, not fabric shoes that needed to bend and stretch.

Frugality taken too far?

For decades of adult life, I’ve bartered, scrounged, saved, reused, and repurposed, generally by choice, often of necessity. Anything organic that burns or rots ends up in the garden as mulch, compost, or a soil amendment. The burnables run through the woodstove first, but the ashes go into the garden to help sweeten our acid soil. We save plastic bags, packing peanuts, and insulated mailers. Over the years, I’ve hauled home discarded pallets, chicken wire, cast-iron cookware, laundry racks, and dozens of other items from the town dump.

The incident with the shoes got me to thinking about the many ways thriftiness can go too far. A quick search of the Web turns up many references to hoarding, obsessive thrift, and addictions to “extreme couponing,” thrift-store shopping, and yard-saling.

Hoarding? Not quite

A quick check my house, outbuildings, and grounds revealed I’d collected a lot of stuff I don’t need and won’t use.

I mucked out half a truckload of polystyrene vegetable containers, dozens of yogurt and deli tubs. I use about two dozen of vegetable containers and another couple dozen tubs each year for seed-starting/transplanting. I cut the bottoms off the yogurt tubs and use them as cutworm collars to protect garden transplants from the nasty larvae. But I’d collected hundreds of them, many from friends and acquaintances. Off to the dump!

I emptied the clothes closets of anything we hadn’t worn for a year. That included a dozen pairs of shoes I like to look at, but don’t wear because they’re either not practical or uncomfortable. Off (or I should say back) to Goodwill!

Next I’ll tackle the knee walls in the attic, a repository of child sleeping bags and the backyard tent, “extra” pillows and old comforters the mice and squirrels have chewed apart for nesting materials, and 20-year-old electronics we’ve never gotten around to recycling.

Later I’ll tackle the the barn and outbuildings, a daunting project.

True frugality

In my opening post two years ago, I described this blog as “Frugal, natural, at-hand: simple ideas for health & household.” I chose the word frugal with care because of its origins, writing:

It embraces a rich assortment of meanings gathered during its evolution from an ancient Proto-Indo-European root word, which meant both agricultural produce and to use and enjoy. This root gave rise to the Latin roots frux, meaning fruit, with associated figurative meanings such as value, success, and profit, and fructus, which figuratively embodies the meanings of enjoyment, delight, and satisfaction in addition to its literal meanings of fruit, and crops.

...So, by frugal, I suggest a way of living that’s fruitful: creative, generative, satisfying, full of delight, and connected to nature’s productive cycles.

Today, I’d add the idea of mindfulness to that definition. Frugality, whether chosen or required by circumstances, demands attention, and care.

By its nature, frugality implies not just usefulness and delight, but use. Hoarding, addiction, and obsession rob any behavior of its joy, and may prevent actual use. At some point, the habit takes control, and the virtues of true frugality disappear.

The English poet William Blake wrote, You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. Enough said!

It's Spring! Pine-Needle Tea

Margaret Boyles — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:00:33 +0000

After staggering, stumbling, and appearing prematurely a couple of times, spring finally arrived around here.

Birdsong, dozens of chubby robins on the lawn, spring peepers in full voice, grass, young dandelions, fat buds on trees and shrubs, an occasional night above freezing.

Spring cleaning anyone?

Not me, unless you count sweeping away the mental cobwebs and reaming the sludge from sluggish muscles. When spring arrives, I head outside.

Wandering down the dirt road into a nearby gravel pit, I found pussy willows on a small alder and didn’t feel bad about clipping some for my kitchen table, since the little tree was clearly in the path of the giant shovel.

I also gathered a small bag of white pine needles from young seedling trees. I always enjoy a big pot of conifer-needle tea in the spring.* The inner bark and needles of our region’s conifers have a long history of medicinal use among the Native Americans. White-pine needle tea is especially rich in vitamins C and A, contains numerous other plant compounds with medicinal value, and may have saved the lives of early European explorers.

Along the edges of my big vegetable garden in the now-bare field behind my house, I found young dandelion greens and hastened back to the house for my vintage dandelion fork to dig some. The tiny ones take a lot of tedious cleaning, but I love their mildly bitter, delicate flavor. I added a few to the evening’s spicy soup.

The electric line-clearing crews came by as invited and dropped off two huge truckloads of chipped trimmings they’d otherwise have had to haul to their chipyard miles away. We use the chips as a long-lasting mulch to mark the rows between our garden beds and for other landscaping applications,

I spent the better part of the afternoon making two onion quiches and a couple of maple-pumpkin (squash) pies. A lot of last season’s onions had sprouted in the root cellar, and I still had half a dozen winter squash to use up. The hens have begun laying well again, and the guys who tap our maple trees had just delivered a gallon of new syrup.

Monday morning

I brewed that pot of pine-needle tea* and settled into a comfortable chair to watch the Boston Marathon on TV, an annual rite of spring for me.

Though I’ve never run that race, I've often played hooky to watch it. I knew that many of my old training and racing partners would be either running or working as race officials in and around the finish line.

After the top few wheelchair athletes and runners finished, I headed for my computer and poked around in Twitter for a while. That’s where I first caught word of the explosions.

I ran back to the TV and saw the awful images. My first thought when the news sank in: Back in my running days, if I were among the runners, I’d have been approaching or crossing that finish line about 4:09:43, the time of the first explosion.

I’ve since learned that I my friends, and the other local runners and workers shaken, but uninjured.

By the time this post gets published, the forsythia in the yard and along the roadside will have bloomed, brightening the world, even on the grayest day. Along with most other Americans, I’ll be processing the events of this spring for a long, long time.

*Pine needle tea

Chop and bruise a good handful of young white pine needles and twigs, then place in a glass, ceramic, or stainless tea pot. Pour two cups of boiling water over the needles, cover the pot, and allow to steep for a few minutes. The tea will turn a pale green with a light, piney smell. It’s delicious. Some people like to add a squirt of lemon, or blend with another favorite tea.

As with any wild-collected herb, don’t use unless you are certain you’ve identified the plant correctly. Don’t use this or other herbal products without first consulting your health practitioner if you are pregnant, seriously ill, or taking prescribed medicines.

DIY Deodorant and Aftershave/Toner

Margaret Boyles — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 18:41:38 +0000

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Down Home

Most do-it-yourself bodycare articles seem to aim exclusively at women.

But both men and women may have similar concerns about the products they use on their bodies, and like women, some men have taken to making their own.

Lose the flowery scents, add a spicier one (or not), and the homemade products work well for men. When made from a few readily available ingredients, the homemade products are generally much less expensive, too. Repurpose or buy a few attractive glass bottles with caps or stoppers to store your products if you want them to look good on your bathroom shelves.

Natural aftershaves & skin toners

A splash of cider vinegar (diluted half and half with water, or not) serves many a manly man and womanly woman as an aftershave lotion or astringent skin toner. Folks with dry skin could add a couple of tablespoons of coconut or other light oil to the vinegar and shake well.

Unlike most perfumed products, the vinegar smell dissipates quickly, so you won’t go off reeking of salad dressing.

Here’s a recipe for a scented aftershave/toner.

Pour two cups of ordinary drugstore witch hazel into a glass jar. (You could substitute 100-proof vodka for an equally effective, though pricier, astringent effect.)
Add a cinnamon stick, half a dozen whole cloves, and a few sprigs of fresh herbs such as rosemary, lavender, mint, basil, or a mixture.
Add a few drops of tincture of benzoin as a preservative.
Set the jar in a cool, dry place for a couple of weeks, then decant into a nice bottle.
You could strain the herbs and spices or not. (They look cool in a bottle.)
For a citrusy scent, instead of the fresh herbs (and either with or without the spices) add strips of orange and/or lemon peel or a few drops of citrus essential oil and let the jar sit in a cool place until it smells the way you want it to.

Deodorant? Antiperspirant?

Sweat itself has no odor. Underarm odor is produced when sweat comes into contact with naturally occurring bacteria on the skin; the odor comes from the metabolic processes of the bacteria as they work to break down the fatty acids and other components of sweat.

Do you even need “underarm protection”? For some folks, the answer is no, yet like most Americans, they still follow cultural norms and apply it anyway.

Deodorants mask body odors, while antiperspirants plug sweat-producing ducts temporarily, so sweat can’t be released to the skin surface.

There’s been a lot of concern about the aluminum compounds and certain other ingredients in commercial antiperspirants and deodorants. Although no conclusive scientific evidence has shown a definite link between these compounds and the subsequent development of breast or other cancers, research to date has offered conflicting results, which is why some folks prefer to stay away from commercial products.

Here’s a recipe for a deodorant that does a passable job of suppressing underarm sweat:

1 part baking soda
1 part arrowroot starch or cornstarch
Enough unrefined coconut oil (available online or in health food stores) to make a thick paste.

Mix baking soda and starch, then add oil, mashing with a fork until you have make a thick, creamy paste. Add a few drops of essential oil if you want to leave a scent (citrus, sandalwood, bergamot, etc.)

Add coconut oil, working the mixture with a fork until you have a creamy paste. Put the mixture in a small, airtight glass container; use fingers to spread thinly under arms.

Smelling good (or not)

A lot of us prefer our bodycare products fragrance-free, but adding a few drops of a favorite essential oil will impart a lasting scent to any product. Go easy!

Witch Hazel: A Native Shrub Worth Knowing

Margaret Boyles — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 20:42:54 +0000

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Down Home

Witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana): A humble, but amazing native North American shrub. Consider:

Its bark, twigs, leaves and roots have been used for hundreds of years by native Americans to treat a host of ills.
It’s one of only a handful of botanicals approved by the FDA as a drug, and its distilled extracts can still be found on most pharmacy shelves.
Its extracts are used in many cosmetics and skin-care products, including aftershaves.
It is under active investigation for treating diabetes, skin cancers, chronic-wound care, and many other disease conditions.
Native Americans used its flexible branches for making bows and harvested its seeds for food.
Many dowsers still prefer its branches for use as dowsing rods.
Witch hazel is rare among flowering plants in that its delicate, spidery blossoms open in late fall, alongside last year's fruits, and after its leaves have fallen.

Witch hazel for household first aid

You can find many witch-hazel-containing products on drugstore or health-food-store shelves. Most of them are distilled products that usually contain about 14 percent of either ethyl or isopropyl alcohol as a preservative.

Generations of Americans have used ordinary drugstore witch hazel as a mild antiseptic and astringent, an aftershave, a toner for oily skin, to soothe the pain and itch of bites, strings, sunburns, bruises and abrasions. It helps shrink hemorrhoids and undereye puffiness. Generations of new moms have used gauze pads soaked in witch-hazel to ease the pain of episiotomy or perineal tears after childbirth.

Many people have trouble getting used to witch hazel’s odd smell, but it dissipates quickly after use. Lots of health-food store products containing witch hazel extracts mask the smell by adding essential oils of rose, lavender, or other aromatic herbs.

Make your own decotion or tincture

Non-distilled witch hazel products—tinctures and infusions—capture more of the plant’s natural astringent compounds (called tannins), most of which don’t survive the distillation process. Herbalists say the plant has other beneficial compounds, too.

You can make these yourself if you have access to witch hazel trees in neighboring woods. (Use the native species, Hamamelis virginiana, rather than the ornamental varieties sold in plant nurseries.) Here’s how:

Prune a few handfuls of twigs and small branches (please prune with care* so you don’t injure the tree). Then cut the twigs into small pieces, after peeling and scraping as much of the bark as possible from the twigs into your container with a sharp tool. The bark, especially the inner bark, contains the highest concentration of healing compounds.

For a water-based witch hazel decoction, place the chopped twigs and scraped bark into a stainless-steel pot; cover completely with water (use distilled water if you have heavily treated water), bring the contents to a boil, then cover the pot and reduce heat and simmer for at least half an hour. Keep the twigs covered with water. Set in a cool place overnight, then strain into glass jar. Refrigerate and use within a few days.
To make a long-lasting alcohol tincture, place chopped bark and twigs in a large glass jar and cover with vodka. Let it sit in a dark, cool place for six weeks, then strain and store, covered, in a glass jar, also in a cool, dark place. To use, dilute a couple of tablespoons in half a cup of water, soak clean gauze, washcloth, or cotton balls in the mixture, and apply.

Use the decoction or the dilute tincture on hemorrhoids, poison ivy, sunburns, bites and swellings, to soothe varicose veins, and as a wash for tired muscles. You can also put some of the decoction or the diluted tincture into a spray bottle to spritz onto wounds, bruises, and itchy areas.

Although you may see references to sipping witch hazel teas and tonics for diarrhea and other conditions, most herbalists recommend using it internally only under the care of your healthcare professional.

* To prune: Use a set of good scissor-type pruning shears. Locate the collar, the rough, swollen area at the base of each branch you plan to cut. Then locate the branch bark ridge (dark, raised area of compressed bark). Make your cut just outside the bark ridge and collar. This will allow the tree to heal its wound and prevent decay from spreading into the trunk.

Photo credit PLR_Photo Some rights reserved.

Boulders, Rocks, and Stones

Margaret Boyles — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 21:09:45 +0000

I live in a hardscrabble landscape, where the soil’s freeze-thaw cycles break up and thrust rocks deposited by the last glacier to the surface every spring.

Highways and secondary roads bulge with “frost heaves,” boulders heaved up under the asphalt, which often create yawning crevasses in the pavement that will challenge bicyclists spinning by later.

In my area of New Hampshire, the Granite State, you see evidence everywhere of the boulders our forefathers and their sturdy beasts dug up and hauled away to make room for pastures and row crops.

They put them to good use, as walls to mark property boundaries and shore up slopes, as foundations for homes and barns, as liners for the shallow wells that still serve many rural households.

They used smaller rocks indoors, too. I grew up hearing stories about how my Vermont grandmother Carrie Martin heated fist-sized stones in her kitchen woodstove, removed them with tongs, and dropped them into the long-handled brass bed warmer, which she slid up and down between the sheets to warm them before putting her nine children to sleep, two and three to a bed.

Some gardeners today make stone pathways and pile rocks around plants as a weed-suppressing and heat-storing mulch. Some homeowners paint rocks and use them to edge walks and driveways.

Rocks litter the surface of my vegetable garden, and more emerge from the ground every year. Some have poked up that I've founnd far too huge to move, so I simply plant around them. In the working gravel pit a few hundred yards through the woods from my house, I can see the soil profile of my garden in the cutaway and understand why it was so difficult to plant asparagus 30 years ago.

I’ve always loved these rocks. They lie there so humbly and seemingly passive, yet the minerals leached and weathered from them stiffen the trees, the underbrush, and even my own backbone, since I eat the food that grows among them.

Despite the way they thwart my hoe and cultivators, I love handling and rearranging the stones in my garden. I find it strangely calming. Over the years, I’ve talked to many gardeners who feel the same way.

I have neither the skill nor the patience to build beautiful dry stone walls, though I admire the few artisans who still do. But when I find a stone I especially like, I often bring it inside to admire for a while before tossing it back out.

Three years ago, we replaced a sagging porch with a small solar greenhouse and eliminated the lawn in front of it with six raised beds. We dug a foot-deep trench between the greenhouse wall and the raised beds, and over three gardening seasons, collected buckets of small stones every time we weeded the garden, using them to gradually fill the trench.

This allows good drainage and prevent weeds from growing there and shedding their seeds into the soil of the garden beds. (see photo)

I also hired my neighbor to dig a trench between the house and driveway and fill it with pea gravel screened from the pit next door. Not ideal, but cheap, and attractive.

In the process of taking down the old porch, we unearthed a stunning granite step, more than six feet long and two feet wide that now serves as the entryway to the greenhouse. This chunk of unpolished rock probably mined more than a century ago from the Swenson Granite quarry still operating a few miles down the road in Concord.

The poet in me also loves the symbolism of rocks. Think of the concrete idiomatic uses of rock and stone in everyday speech: e.g., rock-solid, rock steady, rock bottom, between a rock and a hard place, stone cold, stone sober, written in stone, etched in stone, leave no stone unturned, stone’s throw.

Robert Frost’s Mending Wall—among my favorite poems—uses the imagery of New England rock walls to get at even deeper themes. Here’s a snippet. I hope you give the whole poem a careful read.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun

…...........................

We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:

Don’t Be Fooled by Misleading Food Label Descriptions

Margaret Boyles — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 13:44:27 +0000

All natural! High-fiber! Multigrain! Only 2 grams of fat per serving! Contains real fruit!

Food marketers have taken full advantage of Americans’ growing interest in the connection between good nutrition and good health. They pile on words chosen for their emotional appeal, to make the food seem healthy.

But some of the most common food descriptors don’t carry any real meaning. Others falsely imply health benefits, or intentionally mislead consumers into believing a product is a healthy (or healthier) choice. Here are a few of the most common:

Natural Except for meat and poultry products, this popular terms isn’t regulated. It just implies the product and all of its ingredients originated at some point in nature.

Fat-free, sugar-free Just because a product is genuinely fat-free or sugar-free doesn’t mean it’s lower in calories or healthier.

Good source of fiber Unlike fiber-rich whole, unprocessed grains, fruits, vegetables, and legumes, many processed food products (including candy bars contain added “functional fibers,” some of which are synthetic and others are extracted from food. So far, there’s no proof these added fibers offer the same health benefits as the fiber you get from eating whole, unprocessed plant foods.

Contains... made with... So a product contains real fruit, is made with whole grains or real butter. But how much does it contain? The manufacturer may have shaken a bit of whole-wheat flour over a vat of dough, or blessed the granola bar with a whisper of apple concentrate. Look for the ingredient list on the package. The ingredients in a food product must be listed in descending order of predominance by weight. Your product may contain twice as much sugar as whole grain, and the “real fruit” may not be from the bowl of berries and grapes on the package, but from a whisper of apple concentrate that appears way down the ingredient list.

Multigrain Unless the label on a flour-based product says 100% whole grain, words such as multigrain, stone-ground, even organic (see below) probably mean that the product is made from all or mostly refined flours, which have had the nutritious germ and bran removed.

Contains no... For example, many products now advertise themselves as containing no high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). But substituting cane sugar or some other caloric sweetener doesn't make the product healthier. The calories from the added sweetener still add up, and may contribute to the health problems associated with overweight and obesity.

Serving You often see only...of...per serving on a label. But really, who eats only half a cup of ice cream, or a teaspoon of salad dressing? Read the product’s nutrition label to see how much fat (or sugar, sodium, etc.) you’ll get in the amount of the product you actually eat.

Made with real... See “contains” above.

Lightly sweetened Reduced sugar, no added sugar, and sugar free have legal definitions, but lightly sweetened doesn’t. You’ll see it on boxed cereals, beverages, any of which may contain more sugar than you’d consider “light” sweetening.

On the other hand, the word “organic” has a strict, highly regulated meaning. The USDA Organic label indicates that the food has met strict standards of production and (if applicable) processing. The standards prohibit use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, sewage sludge, irradiation, and genetic engineering.

On the USDA's organic consumer-information page, you can also learn the meanings of various other terms such as free range, cage free and grass fed.

A few takeaways

Choose real, unprocessed food As long as you follow good food-safety practices, you won’t go wrong with fresh fruits and vegetables, eggs from the shell, unprocessed poultry and meats, wild-caught fish, whole grains and whole-grain flours, dry beans and lentils.

Read before you buy/eat Learn to read and understand nutrition labels and ingredient labels. Government regulations specify what must appear on these labels, although, as this lengthy report details, there’s huge room for improvement. This Center for Science in the Public Interest document is worth a close read.

Choose grain-based products promoted as “100% whole grain” Words such as stone-ground, 100% wheat, unbleached, enriched, and multigrain often describe products made with refined flours. If the first ingredient listed on the label is 100% whole (wheat, rye, corn, etc), that assures you that the product contains only whole grain(s).

Cook from scratch With a little extra planning, making meals from scratch really doesn’t take that much more time. Think simple: Whole-grain toast, eggs and fresh fruit makes breakfast. A bowl of salad greens topped with leftover chicken for lunch. A pan-grilled fish with steamed vegetables. Fresh fruit and a cube of favorite cheese for dessert.

Want goodies? Make your own. Even if you’re using highly refined white flour and sugar, your homemade goodies will contain fewer or no artificial ingredients, and you’ll be able to avoid the plethora of synthetic ingredients, trans fats and excess salt/sugars/fats found in most commercial snack and dessert products.

Saving Stuff for New Uses: Some of My Favorites

Margaret Boyles — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 14:26:11 +0000

Blog Name:

Down Home

There's a famous New Yorker cartoon from the early 1990’s (click on image to enlarge) about recycling.

It shows a long stream of people trudging up the many switchbacks of a flaming ramp to deposit items in an endless string of boxes labeled tea bags, wadded up masking tape, broken ball point pens, not blue paper, etc. The cartoon is captioned Recycling in Hell.

That’s how I feel about most artsy-crafty projects that “repurpose” household discards. While I love seeing those chandeliers from bicycle wheels, jewelry from aluminum cans and bicycle chains, shoulder bags and vests from old blue jeans, and chicken coops from used pallets, I shudder at the thought of taking on the work myself.

And yet I do find myself saving or scrounging stuff that has immediate usefulness and doesn’t require a sewing machine, carpentry (or any other) tools, paint, or appliqués.

I manage to stay on the sane side of hoarding, and the practice keeps my creative juices flowing and my trash volume low. Occasionally, it may save a little money.

I’ve already shared many of my reuse practices, including onion skins, wood ashes, old socks and nylons, and things salvaged from the town dump

Here are a few more that seem worth sharing.

Paper towel and toilet paper tubes I use these as cutworm collars for protecting tomato, pepper, and cabbage-family transplants during their first couple of weeks in the garden. The tubes gradually soften and rot into the soil. I also the paperboard tubes for cable and cord storing.

Toothbrushes Toothbrushes make ideal scrubbers for hard-to-reach-place. They allow me to clean in and around sink fixtures and the hinges on the toilet seat, in and around the keys on my computer keyboard, into all sorts of corners, and into the smaller parts of my bicycle (including the chain). They scrub mud (and worse) from the treads of athletic shoes and boots.

Rubber bands I save all the fat rubber bands our rural postman uses to bundle letters to use for all the usual purposes. I also wrap them around the ends of clothes hangers to prevent the susceptible garments from slipping off the hanger. When painting or varnishing, I pull a rubber band top to bottom across the can once the lid is open. The stretched rubber across the top of the can makes a nifty paintbrush wiper to keep paint from dripping off the end of the brush.

Soap slivers I used to collect these in an old cotton sock to hang in the shower and use as a soap-on-a-rope scrubber. Now I store them in the old sock and mash them together until I accumulate a soap ball about the size of one full bar of soap. Then I grate the soap ball and stir the gratings into a mixture of one cup each of baking soda, washing soda, and borax. Voila! Powdered laundry detergent. I store it in a one-quart recycled yogurt container and use a couple of tablespoons per load of laundry. This product is faster to make and easier to store than the liquid detergent I had been making (and still occasionally do).

Plastic lids I use various sizes of lids as coasters, to catch drips under houseplants and opened jars of honey. Cut a slit in one and slip a paintbrush handle through to prevent paint drips from falling onto your shirtsleeves.

Tops from parmesan cheese containers Amazingly, these tops fit onto narrow-necked glass mason jars, which I use to store my homegrown herbs. I also use an empty parmesan container for shaking flour onto my work surface when rolling a pie crust or shaping bread dough.

Zippered plastic bags As long as it still holds water when zipped, I never throw a zipper bag away. I wash them out, dry them on my laundry rack, and reuse them again and again. I freeze a lot of fruit and vegetables each summer and find I can get years of reuse out of a single bag. As for labeling, I just cross out last year’s label with my magic marker and write a new one.

Grow an Indoor Salad Garden from Stumps, Stems, and Roots

Margaret Boyles — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 14:24:24 +0000

Blog Name:

Down Home

Everybody needs a food garden.

No matter how small your garden and meager your harvest, the fresh food you produce there will will be tasty and nutritious. It will connect you with the natural world.

Okay, maybe you don’t have much or any outdoor space. It’s midwinter. Seed packets have yet to appear in local garden centers.

Well, you could follow my earlier suggestion to grow baskets of winter greens under a shop light. But you could also start an indoor salad garden that would give you attractive houseplants without planting a single seed.

Load up your cart

Begin in the produce aisle of your local supermarket. Toss in a couple bunches of celery and and couple of heads of Romaine lettuce (or other lettuce attached to an intact base), a few small onions, and several packages of the fresh herbs you use most: basil, oregano, mint, thyme, sage, rosemary. You’ll want stems four to six inches long.

Head for the organic section to collect a couple of sweet potatoes, a few beets, a few large radishes, and a few unwaxed turnips. Why organic? You’ll want your roots to sprout, and many conventionally grown root vegetables have been sprayed to prevent sprouting.

These vegetables comprise your garden starters. The cost is negligible, because you get to eat a lot of what you’ve bought.

Gardening supplies

You’ll also need:

Containers for your plants. Your imagination is the limiting factor here. The only requirements for a good plant container: It must hold soil, drain well, and have contained no toxic or hazardous materials. Coffee cans, plastic buckets, galvanized tubs, with drainage holes punched into the bottom and sides; clay pots of any size or shape, burlap bags, wooden crates, polypropylene shopping bags, sandbags, window boxes, cut-away soda bottles, a length of PVC pipe with planting holes cut out, pieces of roof gutter with holes drilled in the bottom.
A bag of sterile potting soil. Don’t use ordinary topsoil. It’s too heavy for indoor plantings and may contain weed seeds, spores of plant diseases, and insect pests.
Some form of liquid fertilizer. You can find many complete liquid fertilizers at garden centers (and even make your own). I use a commercial product containing a mixture of fish emulsion and seaweed extract. (Very smelly, but the smell dissipates within a few hours.) Use any fertilizer according to package directions.
Sunny windowsills or a full-spectrum fluorescent light fixture or two. Although leafy crops don’t need as much sun as those that flower and fruit, your growing crops will still need a few hours of sunlight each day. Indoor growers have developed some truly ingenious ways to make the most of what light they have.
A watering can and maybe a plant mister. You can even make your own waterer from a plastic jug. A repurposed spray bottle or one from the dollar store will work fine for misting.

Growing salads and soup greens

Celery from a stump Just cut the bottom two inches from a bunch of celery (refrigerate the stalks fo later use), and “plant” it, root-side down in a saucer of water or an inch or two of pot of moist sand or potting soil. Leaves, then tender stalks will slowly emerge from the center. When the stump is well-rooted, transplant it into a larger pot. You’ll be able to harvest tender stems and leaves for soups and salads for many months.

Romaine or other lettuce from a stump Follow the same procedure as for celery. Pick the outer leaves as they mature, leaving new leaves to grow from the center.
Clone new basil, sage, mint, thyme, oregano, or rosemary plants Remove lower leaves of the stems of fresh herbs and set the stems in water. Keep the water fresh.Once your stem has a good set of roots, you can plant it in potting soil in a suitable container. Keep the plants growing in a sunny windowsill or under a full-spectrum fluorescent. Trim “branches” as needed to clone new plants. light.
Sweet potato foliage Unless you patronize ethnic supermarkets or do a lot of Asian-style cooking, you may not know that sweet potato foliage is edible, tasty, nutritious--and makes a gorgeous, irrepressibly vining houseplant. Note: Don’t try this with regular potatoes, whose sprouts and leaves are poisonous. Slice the sweet-potato root in half or leave it whole. Use the toothpick method to suspend your sweet potato in a jar of water with the cut side under water until it begins rooting and sprouting. Each little “eye” above the water level will grow a new slip that you can remove and place in water to root. You can even grow tubers from your rooted slips in a large polypropylene shopping bag or other suitable container if you have enough space.
For fresh green onions, cut a bit of the root ends from cooking onions (leaving an inch of so of flesh) or from a bunch of scallions and plant them in a pot of moist growing medium. You can even plant a whole cooking onion that's begun to sprout. Trim blades for use as the new scallions reach harvestable size.
To grow beet, radish, or turnip greens, follow steps similar to those outlined for sweet potatoes. You can use the toothpick-suspension method, or plant your cut roots in a large shallow bow with water, clean sand or some some small rocks. Remove the largest outer leaves (if any),cut off about a third of the root and set the flat cut end in the bowl or so from the bottoms of several good-size beets (so they will sit firmly) and place them in the bowl. If the root has leaves, remove (and eat) the largest, leaving a few tiny leaves in the center. Once each root grows a healthy set of roots and leaves, plant it in a container of potting soil. As the new plant grows, harvest the outer leaves for salads or cooking; leave the center leaves to grow.

Photo credit: Romaine lettuce, six weeks from a stump 1840 Farm. Some rights reserved.

Call Down the Calm

Margaret Boyles — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 17:16:53 +0000

Blog Name:

Down Home

I’ve found I can’t do much to prevent the rise of strong negative emotions—anger, panic, fear, anxiety, frustration, sadness, hopelessness, resentment.

Besides, they’re often justifiable, especially in emotionally or physically toxic environments, and on those days when one calamity after another seems to strike.

But ruminating on what caused the feelings or acting impulsively when I’m in the grip of a negative state does nothing to fix the situation and may send me on a downward spiral to a place I don’t want to go.

Midwinter seems to bring on more of these states than other times of year. Below, I share a few tips that help me halt that downward plunge.

I think of them as “calling down the calm.”

Each of my calming strategies begins with noticing the rising feeling, naming it, then intervening quickly to restore emotional balance.

In my experience, calling down the calm is empowering because each technique involves self-awareness and choice. Each of these strategies is available immediately, costs nothing, and takes no training.

Why calm down?
Strong negative feelings evoke a cascade of physiological responses that enable us to respond quickly to genuine threat. But allowed to fester, the same responses endanger our health.

Plus harboring negative emotions makes me feel lousy. It’s no accident our words anger , anxiety, and angst share a common ancient root, which means to narrow, squeeze, or choke. Held onto, negative feelings narrow my perspective, shrink my options, and choke any possible joy from the moment.

Take a breath (or 10). Breath is one of our greatest psychological and physiological tools. It’s always available, and practiced mindfully it exerts immediate positive effects on both body and mind.
Count. Mom’s old advice, “Count to ten,” really holds up in moments of great emotional stress. It not only refocuses attention, but its ordering function tends to keep me moving forward with the task at hand, or with a calm and appropriate response to the situation.
Just stay with the discomfort. Somebody once gave me this valuable advice: “Nobody ever died from a strong feeling. Sometimes just sitting with your discomfort and doing nothing is the most powerful act of all.” This is different from suppression, because I’ve acknowledged the rising feeling and named it. I find naming a powerful psychological tool because it gives me some distance from the focus of my discomfort, so I don’t fully identify with it. I feel angry, but I’m not the anger.
Stop! Sometimes just interrupting the negative feeling with a stern injunction to quit it works wonders. Because all I have to do to avoid any damage from hanging onto a feelng, really, is just stop it cold
Move. Intentional physical movement—a quick turn around the parking lot or the driveway, a few jumping jacks—brings the attention to the working muscles instead of the mental chaos.
Laugh. Laughing, even when you don’t feel like it, measurably reduces stress hormones, and positively affects immune function and cardiovascular systems. Researchers say laughter is contagious and works its magic best in company with others. But laughing alone works, too. Fake laughter works. Even anticipating a humorous experience confers health benefits.
Groan, shout, or shriek. People instinctively groan in the grip of strong emotion. But I’m talking about groaning intentionally, just to break the grip of a negative emotion. It works wonders for me. I do most of my groaning and shrieking in my car (alone), where I don’t feel self-conscious. Groaning and shrieking encourages deeper, more complete breathing (see above), and sometimes lapses into hilarious laughter (see above).

Finally, when I can remember to, I take the advice of the opening lines from Carl Sandburg's wonderful poem, Joy:

Let a joy keep you
Reach out your hands and take it as it runs by.

After all, nothing describes the corrosive effects of long-held negative feelings than "the little deaths." I'm for grabbing the next little joy that runs by.

Photo credit: shawnzrossi on Flickr Some rights reserved.

Coffee

Margaret Boyles — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 14:39:50 +0000

I’ll admit to a lifelong coffee addiction. I drink it strong, black, and unsweetened.

We buy ours from our local food co-op—fair-trade, organic French Roast—and grind it fresh for every pot.

I will say also that coffee contradicts many of my values. I stay far away from other addictive substances. I certainly don’t grow it myself and my consumption doesn’t support local agriculture.

And yet, drinking lots of coffee—as much as 3-5 or more cups per day—has been associated with numerous health benefits: a lower incidence of type 2 diabetes, heart attack and stroke; less depression, Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia; Parkinson’s disease, some forms of breast cancer, and liver cancer.

But [sigh], it’s important to note that the medical research supporting these health benefits consists largely of “observational” studies, which can’t declare a definite cause-and-effect relationship between coffee drinking and lowered risk of these chronic diseases.

So, from a health perspective, good science says the jury’s still out on coffee drinking. But strong coffee and the spent grounds have a lot of other uses. For example:

Cook with it. You can use some of that leftover morning coffee to add depth and complexity to almost any marinade, gravy, sauce, frosting, or as as part of the liquid in a soup, stew, fruit smoothie, or dessert. Add a tablespoon or two of freshly ground coffee beans to a cake, cookie, or brownie batter (coffee has a special affinity for chocolate). Look online for thousands of recipes that use coffee as an ingredient, such as these:

Coffee-laced breakfast eggs
Smokey black bean soup
Chicken with Coffee Mole

Freeze leftover coffee for iced drinks or to thaw for cooking. Just pop into ice-cube trays and freeze.Then remove the cubes and store in a zippered plastic bag.

Use it in the garden. Coffee grounds have some plant-supporting nutrients; research has found they offer some protection against several plant diseases. Add to your compost pile, stir them into topsoil, or sprinkle a light layer around plants. They may help repel slugs and domestic cats from digging in your garden. Here’s advice from an expert.

Evenly disperse small seeds such as carrots, lettuce, and various herbs by mixing a few dried coffee grounds with the seeds before planting.
Exfoliate, tone skin. Simply rub a handful of spent coffee grounds over face and body. Add a bit of olive oil to the grounds for a smoother finish. You can add a handful of coffee grounds to improve the results from a facial scrub or hair conditioner.

Treat hair. For an instant shine, rub coffee grounds through damp hair after shampooing, or add a few grounds to your hair conditioner, then rinse. The coffee grounds will darken light hair.

Darken hair or cover gray temporarily. Dip freshly washed hair into a bowl of strong, dark coffee; squeeze out, use a cup to pour coffee through hair repeatedly. Pin it up under a large plastic bag for half an hour. Then rinse hair and dry as usual. For a more dramatic coloring, make a thick paste of instant coffee or finely ground beans with hot water and apply the paste to sections of hair. Pin up under a large plastic bag for half an hour, then rinse.

Give fabrics an antique look. Here are instructions for aging an inexpensive white or tan cotton garment or swath of fabric. You can use a pot of strong black coffee instead of the grounds.

Control wood-ash dust. Sprinkle the morning’s coffee grounds on ashes before scraping them from your stove or prepare to empty the ash pan.

Deodorize closets, car interiors, fridge, and microwave. To remove stale or musty odors fill an empty butter tub with coffee grounds, punch holes in the cover and set the tub in your closet, car, or fridge. Alternatively, tie up a cup of spent or fresh coffee grounds in a pantyhose leg and hang on a hook in a closet or pantry.

Hide scratches in dark wooden furniture. Use a Q Tip dipped in strong black coffee to swab small scratches in dark-stained wood. For larger areas, make a paste of finely-ground fresh beans or instant coffee and a little hot brewed coffee, brush paste over area, let dry, brush off excess.

Remove stubborn stains. Use a wet coffee filter and a few spent grounds to scrub the stains from ceramic coffee or tea cups. Sometimes a few coffee grounds and a stiff scrub brush will clean up burned-on food or grease from pots and pans.

Mud, Glorious Mud

Margaret Boyles — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 15:29:26 +0000

Blog Name:

Down Home

A serious mid-January thaw turned our dirt driveway into the quagmire that usually doesn’t develop until late March or early April.

The prospect of two (or more) mud seasons this year got me to thinking about...mud.

Mud. Dirt and water. Such common stuff that it’s oozed its way into colloquial language: mud in your eye, mudslinging, stick-in-the-mud, clear as mud, muddy the waters, your name will be mud, happy as a pig in mud, splittin' the mud, dragging his name through the mud.

For centuries, humans have used local mud as a construction material, for healing, in religious purification rituals, and for many forms of recreation (Who hasn't relished making mud pies and splashing in mud puddles?)

One interesting tidbit: For decades, major and minor baseball teams have used a special rubbing mud to rough up the surface of the glossy new baseballs to make them safer to use.

Healing muds and the mud baths used in traditional healing (as well as for skin and hair care) don’t come from the back yard, but from special clay deposits.

Turns out, ordinary backyard mud has many uses, too.

Make some available to local birds, since many species use it to make their nests. Even city residents can create mud puddles (as well as other nesting materials) to encourage birds in their neighborhoods.

Create mud puddles for pollinating insects If you garden, you need pollinators!

Use for emergency first aid (backyard or wilderness) A cool mud compress wrapped around a sprain or a muscle strain and bound with a bandana or a rag will help cool the area and reduce swelling. A daub of mud also helps reduce the pain of a bee or wasp sting.

Provide hours of no-cost fun for kids. Mud play is great fun that helps modern kids recapture an authentic childhood. Here, a family creates a mud-pie kitchen on the balcony of their home. Fun for all generations.

Turn serious play into wonderful mud artworks.

Create a community-wide celebration. You could follow the annual Mud Day tradition of Westland, Michigan.

Feast your eyes! Humans celebrate mud everywhere. There’s even an International Mud Day, which mud lovers will celebrate this year on June 29.

Homemade Mixtures Can Spice Up Beans and Lentils

Margaret Boyles — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 14:42:02 +0000

Eating low(er) on the hog? Or maybe no hog at all?

When I hear the common statement, “When people can’t afford pork or beef, they move to chicken.” I always wonder, “But what about the folks who’ve already moved down from chicken to beans?”

Well, many people have moved to eating more beans and lentils for reasons that may or may not include financial distress, including the health and environmental benefits of eating more plant foods, as well as ethical concerns over eating animals.

Who’s eating beans?

Gallup polling reveals that only about 5 percent of Americans consider themselves true vegetarians, a percentage that’s remained stable since 1999 and that crosses age, gender, and cultural groups.

However, a much larger group of Americans consider themselves “vegetarian-leaning,” or participants in the global “meatless Mondays” campaign, a trend borne out by the fact that meat consumption in the U.S. has fallen 12 percent since 2007.

Build a repertoire of spice blends

As far as I’m concerned, you can’t go wrong with dry beans, peas, and lentils. Legumes are cheap and nutritious. They improve the soils they grow in. They store well for long periods without refrigeration. They’re incredibly versatile; we use them in soups, casseroles, loaves, and burgers.

And for people who find legume dishes bland and boring, grinding up a few spice or herb mixtures to sprinkle on them may change your mind. Here are a few of the thousands of traditional spice combinations from around the world you can adopt for your own use.

I’d suggest investing in a supply of whole rather than powdered spices (visit ethnic groceries and health-food stores, or buy them online) and an inexpensive spice mill or dedicated coffee grinder. Most authentic recipes suggest dry-roasting whole spices (or sometimes frying them in a little oil), then grinding them for the most flavorful mixtures. And most mixtures will keep for several months if stored in airtight glass or metal containers.

Baharat A middle-eastern/north African mixture of sweet, warm, and resinous spices and herbs that comes in many regional variations and goes with everything. We especially love it in a lentil stew that incorporates a lot of chopped fresh Swiss chard.
Za’atar The sumac listed as a major za’atar ingredient is none other than the dried, red berries of the staghorn sumac that grows in dry waste places around here as a weed. (See accompanying photo.) Although there are as many “recipes” for za'atar as households using the spicy mixture, here’s an easy one to get you started.
Harissa A North African staple, harissa is generally prepared as a thick paste, by soaking the dried chilis and blending them with a little olive oil. Control the heat by selecting milder or hotter chilis for your blend.
Quatre epices Despite its name, which means four spices, and its ubiquity in classic French cuisine, recipes for this mix often contain more than four ingredients and often include allspice and cinnamon.
Garam masala Masala is a Hindi word meaning “spice mixture,” and each of the diverse Indian cuisines contains various masalas. Garam (meaning “warm”) masala is one of the best-known. Delicious with red-lentil stew.
Berbere Temper or increase the heat in this classic Ethiopian spice mixture by reducing or adding to the number of dried chilis you use.
Ras El Hanout This warm and complex spice mixture is a fixture in North African cuisines. Don’t worry about getting the proportions exact or eliminating an ingredient you don’t have handy.
Jerk A staple of Caribbean cooking, jerk seasonings come in many varieties. This one goes well with any of the black-bean dishes that are favorites in my household.

By the way, most spice or herb mixtures work well as salt substitutes for people on low or no-salt diets, and as flavor enhancers for people trying to cut down on saturated fats. And any of them can season a vegetable, meat, poultry, or seafood dish. You can also use them as dry rubs or add them to marinades or sauces.

It's worth noting that all aromatic spices contain numerous health-promoting phytocompounds. Most culinary spices have been used by traditional healers for centuries, and many are under investigation in modern medical research