As we all know the supplement industry is run by greed and money almost to the same degree as the pharmaceutical industry (if that’s possible). I personally believe that we can get everything we need from our food, but at times we may not be able to afford to buy all organic or from farmers markets, we may not have the strength of will to break all our addictions to coffee, sugar, processed foods, chocolate, alcohol or whatever it may be. We may be working overtime trying to make ends meet and pay the bills and not have time to learn how to make bone stock, yogurt, kombucha, sauerkraut and everything else. So I do appreciate that at times it is necessary to use supplements. But be warned if you do so there is a whole lot of products out there that won’t do what they say, and are packaged brightly to tempt you to throw your money at them. I spent time working for a multi-level marketing company (EQUINOX) that sold herb and supplements for a very high price–I ended up totally bankrupt from that venture–this may be part of why I have nearly as much resistance to the supplement industry as I do to the pharmaceutical industry. I much prefer, as do most of us, to use herbal teas, cod liver oil, berries, sauerkraut and yogurt than popping a unknown pill.

Read more ...

Published in Healthy Options December 2009.

Recipe for Wild and Raw Blackberry, Walnut Ice-cream.

All of us know the tale of Sleeping Beauty and how long, long ago she was enchanted by a Wicked Witch into a deep slumber lasting a thousand years. How the enchantment fell on the people around her and there grew up a thick brier (bramble) around the kingdom. In 2006 I discovered a book by Stephen Harrod Buhner, The Lost Language of Plants, around that same time I also read Derrick Jensen’s amazing book, A Language Older Than Words, both of these men spoke of a different educational system, and how to study this open and multi-dimensional school of nature to learn to understand and interact with it. I had become interested in these authors because of a biodynamic agriculture course I had taken at one of New Zealand’s oldest biodynamic farms, Hohepa Farm in Hawkes Bay.

Read more ...

Written for Healthy Options magazine November 2009.

Considering that the movement towards sustainable living is picking up speed, no discussion of asparagus would be complete without mentioning Euell Gibbons and his original back to the Earth foraging book Stalking The Wild Asparagus (1962). Euell Gibbons learned how to forage from his mother and was able to support his family with those skills during the dust bowl era of the 1930s. When I first read his book it inspired me to take a course in identifying wild herbs at Wellpark College and soon I was walking the streets of Auckland, my eyes intently focused on the ground, trying to figure out what these plants were that I had never noticed before. One of the first ones that I put a name to was Shephard’s Purse, which has such unique heart-shaped leaves it is an easy one to pick out—suddenly I was seeing it everywhere. Since that day, my list of plants I can confidently identify has slowly but steadily grown. I enjoy this sort of collecting, the collecting of plant names, it is free, doesn’t take up space and organizes the jumble of images and information rumbling through my senses to my brain.

Read more ...

Written for Healthy Options magazine October 2009.

It is unusual to find a vegetable that not only removes DDT from soil, but reduces the likelihood of getting emphysema or lung cancer for smokers, expels tapeworms and other parasites and is a focus of community and entertainment during Halloween. Pumpkins and winter squash do all this and more. Not only is the flesh of the pumpkin delicious and nutritious, but also it’s seeds and blossoms, in fact, in some places even the leaves are added to soup. This useful fruit is often overlooked and has the ability to create healing in both the Earth and our bodies. Pumpkins and winter squash come to us from Central and South America and were rapidly accepted around the world when introduced by Spanish and Portuguese traders. They were originally grown for the seeds as original varieties didn’t have much flesh.

Winter squash consist of many species within the Cucurbita genus, all of them cross-breed readily. They are different than summer squash in that they have thick, protective skin and a cavity that holds the seeds. Some of the more well known varieties include Butternut, Hubbard, Kabocha (Japanese pumpkin), Acorn, Spaghetti and Atlantic Giant. The ones with deeper orange color have particularly high levels of vitamin A in the form of beta carotene. Their thick skins are also particularly useful, allowing them to be stored for up to 6 months under the right conditions, without refrigeration. Pumpkins are also a good vegetable to buy if you are broke and can’t afford organic produce—conventionally mass-farmed winter squash use less pesticides or herbicides and are not on the hot-list of genetically modified organisms that have been injected into our food-web.

Read more ...

Article published in the Far West Almanac Dec 2008

We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.

Kurt Vonnegut

With 46 million turkeys eaten at Thanksgiving (690 million pounds of flesh), and 22 million at Christmas, the turkey literally becomes a part of us during holiday season. The bird is unique to America, and examining our relationship to it throughout our history demonstrates the schizophrenic nature of how we interact with the ecosystem that supports us. An apt example of this is Sarah Palin’s speech after her turkey “pardoning” ceremony, given in front of a bloody turkey slaughtering tub: youtube

A Bolivian friend bought to my attention the Presidential Turkey Pardoning event that takes place prior to Thanksgiving. Despite determined attempts to find out what the turkey is being pardoned for, I found nothing, proven or alleged, about crimes committed by turkeys. I was excited to read an article about a turkey attacking President Bush, causing him to be evacuated from the White House, but soon noticed the source was The Onion and therefore highly unreliable.

The popular notion that the Presidential Turkey Pardoning ceremony was started by President Truman is also malarkey. It has been suggested President Kennedy triggered the event when he spontaneously declined to eat the turkey given him by the California Turkey Advisory Board. This happened a couple days before his assassination, leading me to wonder if links between this group and the murder have been explored. Actually, this bizarre scape-turkey ceremony was begun by President George H. W. Bush in 1989, and will hopefully be discontinued – even turkeys should be considered innocent until proven guilty.

Wild turkeys are a very different bird than the ones currently carved up for the pleasure of family and friends, and were abundant in the 1600s. By the 1930s, less than 30,000 wild turkeys remained in the country, a result of extravagant hunting and clear-cutting of forests. In 1937, the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act was passed, taxing hunting equipment and putting the dollars into conservation and habitat enhancement programs. The National Wild Turkey Federation was established and after unsuccessfully attempting to release pen-raised birds into the wild, brought back wild turkeys with trap and transfer programs initiated in the 1950s. The main program began with nine wild turkeys! This program was supported by hunters as well as conservationists, as a result it is perhaps the most successful conservation program in history. Today there are more than 7 million wild turkeys. This is an outstanding example of what can be accomplished if we all work together.

Read more ...

Legume family: Fabaceae (or Leguminosae). The third largest family among the flowering plants (after the orchid and daisy families), and second most important to the human diet, after the grasses.

• Alexander Neckham on the ingredients of potage that the English kept simmering over their fires for centuries: “lentils, peas, beans with pods, beans without pods and frizzled beans” (frizzled beans are beans that have been dried over the fire in a heated spoon. — fore-runner to beans on toast perhaps?)
• In the Middle Ages the poor man was likely to be eating bread made with more from bean flour than wheat flour.
• According to Herodutus, fifth century BC Greek historian, Egyptian priests regarded beans in any form as unclean.
• Pythagoras brought beans into disrepute by claiming that they caused insomnia and unpleasant dreams.
• In the Middle Ages in Europe, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Lenten were fast-days. Dried beans were the only protein allowed. They were cooked in a cauldron and mashed into a puree called bean butter.
• Throughout history, beans have been used as a currency-shelled out by the handful, like putting money on the table.
• Ancient pearl merchants in the Middle East, seeking a standard weight by which to measure gemstones, discovered that the dried seeds of the Carob tree, the locust beans, were of an exceptionally uniform weight. Thus the seeds, known as carats, became the universal unit of weight.
• The Greeks and Romans used them for voting. A white bean meant “yes” a black one meant “no”. So when Pythagoras told a man to abstain from beans, he was not making a dietary prohibition, but was telling him to stay out of politics.
• Old English cookery books list them by the handful, tied in linen and suspended in the cauldron to swell and absorb the flavors of the pot.
• King Edward VII heartily enjoyed a slice of pease pudding as an accompaniment to a plate of pickled or boiled pork.
• 1860’s Czech Monk, Gregor Mendel, followed various traits of the pea and deduced two fundamental laws of genetic inheritance.
• Emperor Shen Nung is credited with the decision to grow bean sprouts for use. Legend has it that nature had bestowed on him the ability to recognize by taste what each plant could cure. He wrote Shun Nung Pen Tsao King (The Classical Work on Herbal Medicines of the Emperor Shen Nung) around the 2800 B.C.
• The Romans were so conscious of beans nutritive properties that they offered them in thanksgiving to their gods.
• A remarkable sign of their status in the ancient world is the fact that each of the four major legumes known to Rome lent its name to a prominent Roman family: Fabius comes from the faba bean, Lentulus from the lentil, Piso from the pea, and Cicero from the chick-pea.

Read more ...

2002 marked a turning point for traditional fats with the report by the Institute of Medicine that no level of trans-fats is safe in our diets.

In 2003 a set of very informative articles were published in the San Francisco Chronicle. In them our out-dated information about the evils of saturated fats such as lard and coconut oil were laid to rest. These are very comprehensive and enjoyable reading. Links are provided below.

That was nearly 5 years ago…unfortunately we have been so indoctrinated with fear of saturated fats that even with hefty evidence looming all around us we are having great difficulty in shaking our terror of saturated fats and cholesterol.

The nation’s obesity rate began to skyrocket in the mid-’80s about the same time national low-fat public health campaigns were in full swing. In one year alone –1998-99– Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures show that the nation’s obesity rate rose an astonishing 6 percent. –Fat Makes A Comeback After 3 Lean Decades

This is in part due to the inability of the health industry and others to admit a huge mistake has been made, resulting in epidemics of obesity and diabetes. Perhaps they are afraid of the compensation that might be demanded if this manipulation of the nation was acknowledged. There is huge amounts of money at stake:

• Pharmaceutical companies who are selling incredible amounts of cholesterol lowering (and other) drugs to the population.
• Health insurance groups who are enforcing the requirements that we all need to be on cholesterol lowering drugs.
• Corn and soybean (and other vegetable oil) agriculture conglomerates are highly subsidized to produce unnecessary amounts of these products. Look at the ingredients on our food there is corn or soybean bulking practically everything.

Read more ...

Symbolising: Love, Well-Being and Intelligence

In the United States the fresh plant is called cilantro and the tiny dried fruit is called coriander. In many other parts of the world both plant and seed are called coriander.

• One of the longest recorded histories of all the spices-one of the medicinal plants mentioned in the Medical Papyrus of Thebes (written in 1552 BC)
• According to Pliny: “the best (Coriander) came from Egypt,”and from thence no doubt the Israelites gained their knowledge of its properties.
• When the Children of Israel were nourished by manna in the wilderness they claimed it was…”as coriander seed.” And the people went about, and gathered it, and ground it in mills, or beat it in a mortar, and baked it in pans and made cakes of it ; and the taste of it was as the taste of fresh oil.”
• Coriander is an ingredient in absinthe
• Used to be made into a coriander ale as the volatile oils are extracted more readily by alcohol than water.
• In 17th century Paris-it was the principal ingredient in Eau de Carnes a concoction used as liqueur or a cologne.
• The Africans are said to have called this herb by a similar name goid, which Gesenius derives from a verb gadad, signifying ‘to cut,’ in allusion to the furrowed appearance of the fruit.
• Originally in the northern countries of Europe, the chief consumption of coriander seed was in flavoring certain alcoholic liquors (gin). For which purpose it was largely grown in Essex.
• Veterinary surgeons employ it as a drug for cattle and horses.
• The Chinese believed the seeds had the power of conferring immortality.
• Turner says (1551): “Coriandre layd to wyth breade or barly mele is good for Saynt Antonyes fyre”
• Fruits and leaves posses totally different flavor and cannot be used as substitute for each other.
• It’s name (Greek koris) means bug and it has been used planted around gardens to repel bugs (it can also be made into a spray for bug repellent).
• Re-establishes harmony between the functions of blood and nerves and therefore cheers up and satisfies heart and mind.
• Was grown in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
• If used too freely the seeds become narcotic.
• The Hungarians called it cig¡nypetrezselyem “gypsies’ parsley”

Read more ...

“It is truth, garlic gives man youth.”

–cry of 5th century Greek garlic street hawkers

Allium sativum has been called many things from bountiful bulb to poor man’s treacle

Liliaceae: Lily Family. The other members of this family-the onion and leek, also contain many of the same compounds that are in garlic to a lesser degree and are therefore used quite similarly in most cases.

• History and Mythology
• Culinary
• Medicinal
• Uses
• Warning/Counterindications
• Gardening
• Links

Garlic is the name given to the leek (herb) with gar (spear) shaped leaves and phallic flowers. Perhaps referring to the belief that garlic imparts warlike properties and raises passion. Its Latin name Allium sativum is derived from al = burning, sativum= harvested. It is uncertain exactly where it originated but it is believed to be from either Central Asia and/or Siberia.

William Harvey who published a revolutionary book The Motion of Blood in 1628, was intrigued by a folk remedy for colds which placed a clove of garlic in the stockings overnight. This generally led to the smell of garlic on the patient’s breath the next morning, and reinforced his ideas of how blood circulated around the body. The other well-known connection between garlic and blood is the herb’s traditional property of repelling vampires.

Garlic was also reported to destroy a magnet’s power of attraction. Galen described it as the rustic’s theriac, (meaning heal-all or antidote to poison). Garlic has been used for thousands of years for both culinary and medicinal purposes all over the world.

Read more ...

A feast is not a feast unless to begin Each guest is given ample Toes of Garlic, That finest aphrodisiac To whet his appetite for later revelry

Quintus Horace (65-8BC)

Garlic has been used for thousands of years all over the planet for health, strength and protection in man and animal. If this doesn’t prove it’s power what does? It’s antioxidant properties help to keep away cancer of the digestive system, keeping the blood clean and the toxins moving out of our system. Also good for respiratory–detoxifying our lungs and strengthening our mucous lining with beneficial bacteria.

Digesting our food is key to being healthier and happier, bacteria and yeasts help us to do this and garlic helps to keep the balance. The smell is also a part of the key to garlic, as people used to merely hang garlic from their rafters, over their beds, or around their necks for protection from vampires and evil bloodsucking creatures that drain your life force….

Read more ...