A few more things
(in which I dish out a recipe for the best rice in the world, talk about teaching, and hawk my herb blend) As I write this, a big pot of elderflower champagne is fermenting away in the corner. Its bubbling noises permeate the quiet of my living room. Its a familiar kind of thing, comfortable, [...]
A biscuit and a cup of tea
And sometimes life is both normal and exciting: 1. From the couch in my living room where I write, looking out the window, the flower stalks of my big white sage plant can be seen shooting up towards the sky, waving in the wind. Every morning I run outside to see how many new flowers [...]
Elderflowers and blackberries.
(in which I gather a lot of things, get a few bug bites, and try to stay connected to the earth) There’s one hand and it contains relaxation, and everything I’ve ever mentioned about moving through space at one’s own pace. And then there’s the other hand which holds a to-do list a mile long, [...]
The elegance of water.
Water both scares and excites me. Unlike my husband who can’t stay away from the stuff, I have a healthy respect for it due to a. being a not-so-strong swimmer and b. two almost drowning incidents on the sea shore. I grew up on the water, some of my earliest memories are of the smell [...]
An especially rooted kind of thing
(in which I get woo-woo, and eat a lot of potatoes) As I type this, the afternoon winter sunlight is streaming in through the front windows. Cat is, of course, asleep in a patch of it. I sit with one hand clasped around a mug of chai-spiced and chaga-infused lapsang souchang tea, its spicy warmth [...]
Pinyon Pine Nut Biscotti
On being run down: sometimes us folks who spend all our time making potions for others are the ABSOLUTE WORST at actually taking our own advice. Over the last week, I started feeling more tired than usual, and my throat started hurting a little. Did I think ‘oh, Self, you’ve seen a helluvalot of people [...]
Elderberry Elixir
From the perch of my bed, I like to watch a family of ravens that hang out atop a cypress tree that’s about a block away. Last week, when a storm came through the city, Jam and I sat and watched as one brave raven continued to sit on his perch, facing into the wind, [...]
Happy happy.
(Spiced conifer infused apple tart with a bonus tea recipe to boot!) As I write this, Los Angeles is [relatively] quiet, the afternoon winter sunlight is streaming through the windows, through the incense smoke that clouds the air, onto my legs which are half covered by a very fat cat (actual fat cat, not metaphoric [...]
Fire Cider, and other stories.
The other morning I wandered out onto the stoop and the entire city was enshrouded in a blanket of fog. I ran inside to grab the essentials: slippers, hat, coffee and blanket, and then I sat on the edge of my stoop, on the edge of the world, watching the mysterious shapes appear and re-appear, [...]
Chocolate-thyme flapjacks
There are two thymes in the world. There’s the thyme that that carries on a warm summer breeze, flowers waving in the wind. It’s the thyme that hangs in bunches from rafters, and that scents chowders and stews. It’s the thyme that intoxicates you when you least expect it. The other thyme– thyme number two– sits in [...]
Pomegranate Molasses
I’ve been thinking a lot about synergy lately. You know, how an apple is fantastic on its own but then you combine it with blackberries and a crumble topping and all of a sudden its elevated to new heights. Or turmeric, on its own is a fantastic anti-inflammatory and liver repairing herb but then if [...]
Hawthorn & Rose Turkish Delights
I find this time of year to be a bit like a wave: if you fight it, you go down, most uncomfortably. Everything is shifting. The air has started to fall. The euphoria of summer has been replaced by what, to some can feel like a vague discomfort, and to others outright melancholia. Some people [...]
Apple-rosemary coffee cake
“There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance.” (Hamlet, iv. 5.) Rosemary divides people. Not quite like cilantro does (word on the street is that some peoples’ taste buds are *different* and that cilantro tastes like soap to them), but still, if you say the word ‘rosemary’ there is a group of people (I call them, originally enough, [...]
Spiced Hawthorn-rose syrup
Two wonderful things happened in the last month, and they both occurred over the same weekend. The first was the Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference. I’m sure if you’re up to date with my ramblings on Facebook you got sick of reading about it. A 3-day weekend gathering of Herbalists from all over the country [...]
Gathering and processing conifers
(an information-heavy post) Hello kids, welcome to conifer 101. In which we discuss the identifying, nibbling, gathering and processing of conifer bits for food purposes. During the last few months of my obsession and your patient listening, on Facebook I suggested a conifer gathering post and it was met with THUNDEROUS applause and approval (glares [...]
And then the rains came
“And as he drove on, the rain clouds dragged down the sky after him for, though he did not know it, Rob McKenna was a Rain God. All he knew was that his working days were miserable and he had a succession of lousy holidays. All the clouds knew was that they loved him and [...]
Santa Rosa Plum and Basil Jam
(…on basil. and India. and opening.) Lots of things are sacred in India. Cows are sacred, milk is sacred, moments are sacred, life is sacred, and basil, most definitely, is considered sacred. The most potent varieties are referred to as ‘holy basil’, and a Hindu household is considered incomplete without a little plant somewhere. I [...]
Jeffrey Pine infused baklava
(adventures in Granada, in the mountains, gathering conifers, and an arduous process) It all started in Granada, at the end of last summer. Jam, so sick of being stuck on a small boat for weeks on end, booked us into a fancy hotel somewhere away from the sea. I, quite desperate for a nights sleep [...]
Elderberry Chutney
(in which I get a bit bossy) Gathering with friends is only fun if its an enhancement of gathering alone. Because alone, gathering is a holy experience. You sink into a rhythm, a quiet calm. Snip, pluck, drop, move, repeat. That rhythm becomes a background humm, that turns into a moving meditation. By the time [...]
White Sage Oatcakes
(powerful and gentle: a trait shared by fantastic herbs and humans alike) My favourite white sage patch is a long way away. A 40 minute drive from civilisation, and then a 2 hour hike through yerba santa, juniper and pinyon forests, a couple of stream crossings, through some scratchy bushes, until finally you emerge into [...]
Things to do with baby black walnuts
I have a thing. A colour thing. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before. It’s a visceral reaction to all things pigmented. Much like when around someone you love you want to shower them with hugs and pet their hair (if I’ve ever petted your hair absent-mindedly now you know why), with colours I want to [...]
Rhubarb and Elderflower-Infused Custard Tart
(on perfect pairings) Lets talk about first world problems for a minute. There are some that I am ill-equipped to help with: things like ‘oh no, my new smart phone has a glitch’ or ‘I have too many computers’ or ‘my shiny car is sooohoooo last season’. But then there are areas where I can [...]
Essentially…
(a recipe for braised fennel yum and exploration of what it is we all do) Often, while sitting at my little market stall, I am approached by people who want to know what a herb DOES. People are always interested in the function of person, plant or object alike, because we want to know how [...]
Elderflower cordial
(dancing on the edges of things) I remember the day I first fell in love with the elderflower: it was a hot Glaswegian summer day. I was sitting on my favourite grassy knoll, in the shade of a big craggy old hawthorn bush, with a bounty. All of my adventures involved a bounty of some [...]
Holy smoke
Lately, I’ve been too restless to get anything useful done. In my mind there are these lists of things to do. Newsletters and website updates and blog posts and dealing with traffic tickets (*cough*) and parking tickets (*cough*) and returning phonecalls. I think it’s the coming spring; I want to be outside so much that [...]
Crying over smoked milk
This post is being submitted to the Wild Things roundup over at Hunger and Thirst. If you [still] haven’t checked it out, please do! Few things are as evocative as smoke. It’s primal. We humans have been using smoke since we started using fire. Which, if you think about it, was a long long time [...]
Intention
[conifer sirup for expectorance and yum] Last week Los Angeles was blessed with the presence of the herbalist Matthew Wood. Surprisingly humble for someone who’s spent longer than I’ve been alive dedicated to the study of herbal medicine, being around him is always fun. At one point, we were sitting in my mum’s kitchen while [...]
Moroccan mallow salad
If I were to have a robot self, I would describe it something like this: A satellite dish, with roots, and a nuclear reactor in the middle, plus two hands and a body with which to express the product of said reaction. And when it comes to writing, I feel like one has to have [...]
Lemon Lavender polenta cake
(on livers, and letting go a bit) I was standing in my friend Alysa’s back yard smelling the desert air– with snow falling up in the mountains, and rain clouds billowing their way across the valley, the smell was electric, and cold, and wet. She’d gone to work already. I was packing up, getting ready [...]
Ponderosa pot de creme
(Because sometimes the herbalist needs some nourishment) Around 330am on Thursday morning, I was awoken by a commotion in my neighbours’ apartment. Ten seconds later, to the sound of footsteps thundering down their stairs and their front door flinging open, I sat up in bed and said “Jamie, there’s a fire.” Then came the banging [...]
