This month’s herbal blog party theme is “Spring Greens,” hosted by Darcey.

This spring I happen to be living next to a massive bamboo windbreak. Now, this is not something I would have planted myself — bamboo is overwhelmingly invasive and pretty much impossible to control — but since it’s established here, we’re doing our best to control it by eating the shoots!

These bamboo shoots are not like the ones you find in cans at the store. First of all, they have a lovely fresh, almost pea-like flavor. They’re also hollow in the center — you slice them into pretty little circles.

To harvest fresh bamboo shoots, just break them off at the ground when they’re about a foot tall. Peel off the tough skin, and slice. Most recipes call for soaking overnight or parboiling to remove bitterness and potential toxins, though our bamboo (Phyllostachys aureosulcata) is not bitter at all.

We’ve loved ours in miso soup and in stir-fries, and I’ve been pickling them too.

Yesterday I made a half-gallon of spicy Indian-style bamboo pickle. It’s hot and tart and crunchy — wonderful with flatbread or papadums.

Now, I didn’t really measure anything, but this is the basic gist of what I did:

Harvest, slice, and parboil bamboo shoots. Drain.

Saute a bunch of whole or almost-whole (if they’re big) garlic cloves in a good amount of oil. (Mustard oil is traditional, but you could use a neutral liquid oil like sunflower oil or non-roasted sesame oil if you need to.)

Add a whole lot of hot pepper, a bunch of mustard, some black pepper, a bit of asafoetida, plenty of salt, and other spices to taste. (I used some cinnamon, cumin, and fenugreek.)

Add the bamboo shoots, some sliced lemon, and enough lemon juice to make it nice and sour. (The liquid surrounding the bamboo shoots should be thick, but not too stiff. Cook it down or add more oil, lemon juice, or water if you need to. It should be pretty oily.)

Taste. Adjust the spices and the texture. (Keep in mind that the flavors will mellow as the pickle sits.)

Bottle.

Let it sit at least overnight.

Enjoy!

Tips:

The pickle will keep in the fridge for a long time if you make sure there’s always a film of oil covering the top.

If you want to can your pickle, you should probably use a pressure canner — I’m not sure it’s acidic enough for a water bath.

Next: The nature of bamboo, and a very different pickle.

Share this:

So, I’m trying out this twitter thing, aka microblogging.

(Guido,  Kiva and Darcey have been doing it too, which makes it more fun — a little virtual herbalist party.)

I’m posting about the food I’m cooking and whatever herbal mischief I’m up to at the moment.

I’m going to try to put the feed on the blog, too, but that may take me a few days.

In the meantime, enjoy the minutiae!

PS: The May blog party theme is Spring Greens, hosted by Darcey. Posts are due May 15th.

Share this:

There was a nasty, hot, lung-drying bug going around these parts this spring. Turns out the perfect thing for it is one of your lawn’s best-kept secrets: blender juice.

Specifically, blender juice made of cooling, soothing, mucilaginous plants. Plantains (Plantago spp.), chickweed (Stellaria media), violets (Viola spp.), and mallows (Malva spp.) are especially nice.

(This combination is also wonderful for hot, irritated digestive systems — think ulcers, “Irritable Bowel Syndrome” / IBS, and other inflammatory conditions.)

Making blender juice is a great way to get the fresh, green, cooling properties from just about any plant.

Here’s how to do it:

Pick your plants.

Rinse them off if you need to.

Toss them in the blender with a bit of water.

Blend.

I like to let them sit for a while to infuse, then blend a little more and strain. But you can just go ahead and strain after the first blending if you need to.

Drink.

(Hot tip: mallow/plantain/chickweed/violet blender juice is wonderful sponged on a sunburn.)

Share this:

Why mow it when you can eat it?

Today I wandered around our yard with a basket and came back with a salad.

It had chickweed greens and flowers, dandelion greens, bittercress greens and flowers, creasy greens, violet leaves, and sorrel in it. Chickweed and violet are mild and moist, peppergrass and creasy greens are spicy with a hint of bitterness, dandelion leaves (before the flowers bloom) are pleasantly bitter, and sorrel is distinctly sour.

The boy thought it was too many flavors in one salad, but to me it just tasted like today: riotous spring!

Hint: If you want to encourage more edible (and medicinal) weeds in your yard, dig up a bit here and there. Lots of tasty plants like to grow on disturbed ground.

Share this:

If you hang out with an herbalist for long enough, you’ll likely be exhorted to “get to know” a plant.

Some people might find that phrase a bit funny. “I can get to know about a plant,” they might say, “but to get to know a plant directly — what could that mean?”

Well, most herbalists I know mean just what they say: go sit down with a plant, introduce yourself, and get to know it.

Plants are lovely people to know.

And spring is a great time to get to know them.

Here’s how to introduce yourself:

1. Find a plant.

2. Sit down with it.

3. Pay attention.

Use all your senses.

First, notice where it’s growing. (Sun or shade? Wet or dry? Hard soil or soft?)

Then notice who it’s growing with. (Which plants are next to it? Above it? Below it? How does it relate to these plants?)

Now notice the plant itself.

How is it growing? (Is it tall or short? Stiff or flexible? Does it climb or creep? Reach for the sun or hide in the shade?)

Look at the plant. Does it grab your attention or blend in? What color is it? (Is that color pale or intense? If it has more than one color, which parts of the plant have which colors?)

Touch the plant. Is it warm or cool? Smooth or rough? Tough or delicate? Are the tissues thick or thin? Moist or dry?

Smell the plant. What does it smell like? Is the smell sweet or spicy or sharp or bitter or sour or rotten or minty or refreshing or something else?

If you’ve identified the plant, and you know it’s not toxic, taste the plant. What does it taste like? Close your eyes and hold it in your mouth. What does it remind you of?

Now listen to the plant. No, I haven’t lost my mind. Let all that information sink in and listen carefully. What kind of person is this plant?

People around the world have always understood plants as personalities. Think of the Elder Mother, for instance. (If you want a really wild example of working with plants as personalities, check out Susun Weed’s herbal Healing Wise.)

If you know a plant intimately, you understand it as a whole, with all its quirks, and you know how to work with it. An herb’s attributes can’t be reduced to a list of qualities and categories. (Those categories are just silly shorthand anyway — who can say that cleavers and redroot work the same way, though they both fall in the “lymphatic” category?)

The bottom line: What’s in books — even good books — is just hearsay.

Go know a plant!

(This was supposed to be my entry for the April Blog Party, but as you can see, I got to it rather late. Sigh. My life should be less busy in the coming weeks and months, so have no fear, I shall again blog properly!)

Share this:

You know your lawn is full of wild onions.

Go pull some.

(Make sure they’re wild onions, not something else that grows from a bulb. Hint: wild onions smell strongly of onion.)

Clean them up. (Tedious, but worth it.)

You also might want to shorten them. They do tend to tangle up.

Saute them with butter and salt.

So tasty.

(We had ours with spiced barley and goat chops.)

Share this:

Wild greens, anyone?

Early spring is the time to switch from sweet roots and spices to bittersharp new shoots and leaves. Time for cool air and new light after warm dark hibernation.

Peppergrass is one of my favorite spring greens. It’s also called “pepper cress” and “poor man’s pepper,” and it’s sprouting up all over my yard right now.

Young peppergrass leaves can be used anywhere you might use watercress. I like them mixed in scrambled eggs with a few wild onions. The flowers are tasty too (I saw one little plant blooming already) and the seeds can be sprinkled on food as a sharp, mustardy seasoning (”poor man’s pepper”).

UPDATE: I originally posted that this peppergrass was a Lepidium species. AnneTanne and Tammy pointed out that it looks a lot like Cardamine hirsuta. Now that I look at it, I’m convinced it’s a Cardamine, but I’m not sure which one (cresses are notoriously hard to identify). Calling it Lepidium was just lazy and spaced-out on my part — I do have a lot of Lepidiums in my yard, and I call them peppergrass too. So I had peppergrass = Lepidium in my head, and I didn’t bother to look it up. Live and learn.

(I grew up calling all peppery little cresses “peppergrass.” Perhaps I should teach myself some new common names to alleviate the species confusion? Alright. Cardamines are “bittercress” and Lepidiums are “peppercress.” Maybe I’ll try that. In any case, they’re all tasty in salad.)

Share this:

No, I’m not suggesting you swat your sweetie with a stinging nettle switch. (Though no doubt some of you might enjoy that.) I’m suggesting that nettle is an often-overlooked aphrodisiac plant, as tincture, brew or just plain food.

See, I pretty much missed last month’s aphrodisiac blog party (unless you count my last flax post), so I thought I’d do a combination February/March blog party post. And it’s perfect, because March’s theme is stinging nettle and, really, nettle is one of the best aphrodisiacs out there.

So you’re scratching your head now. “None of my books say it’s an aphrodisiac. And how could something so prickly…”

Well, that’s exactly it. Nettle keeps you separate.

Separate, you say? What in the world is she talking about? Isn’t an aphrodisiac all about, um, togetherness?

Well, see, for an aphrodisiac to work, you have to want to get together. Which means you have to start out separate.

Think of those couples that do everything together. They can hardly turn around without consulting each other. People start to think of them as one person. No surprise, then, that these people often lose interest in each other on a physical level.

Nettle helps you remember where you begin and where you end. (You already know this if you’ve ever come across a nettle patch where you didn’t expect it.)

Nettle is incredibly strengthening and revitalizing — perfect for spring. It’s the best thing I know for that late-winter-blob feeling. (Think of maple sap rising — nettle gets the sap rising in your body!)

We don’t quite have nettles coming up where I live yet, but if you have some where you are, I’d suggest picking them young and sauteeing them with butter and garlic (or ramps if you can get them). So rich and so tasty.

A bit of zing for spring!

Share this:

No, I don’t mean linen sheets, though those are nice too.

Remember the mucilaginous flax seed tea? The slippery-slimy flax hair gel?

What does that stuff remind you of?

Come on, now. Don’t be shy.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, gooey flax tea makes a great personal lubricant!

Homemade lube. How cool is that?

I really should have thought of this before. The lovely Vermont herbalist Dana Woodruff mentioned it to me the other day, and I just about smacked myself in the forehead, cartoon-style. Of course! (It’s exactly the texture of . . . well . . . ovulation!)

Dana got the idea from Sheri Winston, sex-ed teacher / retired midwife (and sister to herbalist David Winston). Sheri’s recipe calls for 1 cup of flaxseeds and 6 cups of water, simmered for 6 minutes and left to infuse for 6 more before straining.

My first response to that recipe is that the quantities are way too large (unless you plan to give some away to all your friends). We’re talking about a perishable product here, so I’d suggest making only a cup or two at a time.

And I don’t think you need such a high concentration of flax seeds in the mix, either. A little goes a long way, especially if you simmer it for longer.

Here’s my recipe:

Simmer 1 tablespoon of flax seeds in 1 cup of water until it’s reduced by half (maybe 20 minutes). Strain immediately. (If you let it cool, it’ll be too thick to strain.)

Store it in the fridge when you don’t need it — it’ll only keep for a couple of days unrefrigerated.

You could experiment with scents and flavors — just add herbs or spices to the simmering pot! (Start with small amounts, though — too much of a strong herb or spice could cause burning in sensitive areas. I’d avoid essential oils for the same reason. And though it might be tempting, I’d stay away from sugar, as it can lead to infections.)

According to Sheri, the basic lube is condom-safe (it’s completely water-based). But if you do plan to use it with condoms, be sure not to add any ingredients that might damage the latex — i.e., nothing oily or caustic.

Have fun!

Share this: