-
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 [...]
-
Wildcrafted medicine class in Los Angeles!
Announcing: Wildcrafted Medicine Class in Los Angeles I’m pleased to announce that my friend Emily and I are going to be teaching a series of wildcrafted medicine classes in Los Angeles. First up: elderflowers! Are you interested in learning how to wildcraft your own herbal medicine? Interested in building your own home apothecary and knowing [...]
-
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, [...]
-
Hurtling through space
(in which I dole out an anatomy lesson, provide pictures of my recent adventures, and reward you with a recipe for the best cookie in the entire world) I’ve been thinking about time lately. Of course there’s city time, or world-clock time, or employer time. I think they’re one and the same. The kind of [...]
-
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 [...]
-
Buckwheat
(in which I once again get a little philosophical, think about the nature of things, and eat some [more] biscuits) My friend Carly said something the other night that kind of blew my mind: she no longer gives people exact arrival times, but instead gives a half hour window. She’s been getting crap about being [...]
-
Exciting news (a giveaway post!)
Well it finally happened. Cauldrons and Crockpots reached over 2000 fans on Facebook, and as I’ve promised, in thanks to all you lovely people who like, comment, read and send me the loveliest emails, its time for a giveaway. As you all know, I have a shop where I sell my hand-crafted herbal goodies. Different [...]
-
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, [...]
summer
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 [...]
More Please
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 [...]
More Please
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 [...]
More Please
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 [...]
A New Day’s resolution, and abhyanga.
As I said, these last couple of posts went up the wrong way around. Nonetheless, Happy New Year, lovely readers. Here are some photos from our Christmas week out in the desert. I’m not really one for New Years resolutions- for the past year or so I’ve been practicing something I’ve come to dub ‘New [...]
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 [...]
Black [tea] and white [fir] cake
Today marks the shortest day of the year, where the sun, our source of warmth and light, is furthest from us. Living in a city, in the modern world, with electricity and lights and all kinds of noises blocking out the silence, it’s easy to forget that we still live in bodies that have cycles, [...]
Eggnog. In a mug.
(on the warming magic & merits of cinnamon) For a week we experimented with keeping the heating on all the time. It was nearing 40 degrees in Los Angeles and living in Southern California for any length of time does something to your temperature tolerance. That is, it destroys it. But having the heating on [...]
Follow Me!
I’m a contributer at Plant Healer Magazine
