Oh, Popeye! -- Broccolipita-ish

I bought fresh spinach and feta cheese at Sam's Club in Middletown. The plan was to make Spinakopita, one of my son's favorites -- I was going to make it with pie dough. I have a clue what dealing with filo is like --- so it was "spinakopita" -- I know it's not, but who cares as long as my son eats it?

Then the spinach scare. Ok, so I throw out the spinach. Even though it was "organic" and probably didn't go near any other spinach -- with so many people in the hospital and someone dead, it's not worth spinakopita-ish to make everyone in my family sick.

So then what? I have a pound of feta and no place to go. So I bought a LOT of fresh broccoli. About 4 florettes. I steamed it. I thawed 2 pie crusts.

I cut up about 3 cloves garlic fine.

I didn't have a yellow onion so I used about 1/8 of a hefty red onion. -- about 3-4 tbs when chopped fine.

I fried up the garlic & onion in olive oil, tossed some crumbled up feta in briefly -- probably a good 1/2-3/4 cup. Only for about a minute or less -- I removed it from the heat when the cheese started melting a little -- just enough to make some creamy oil in the pan, but not to make a gooey mess.

I burned a finger from the steamer -- that is definitely a prerequisite!

Then I used tongs to hold pieces of broccoli on the cutting board (they're HOT!) and chop them up with my handy veggie cleaver -- cutting up the florets and stems into tiny chunks and a bunch of bittie flowers. I tossed this in with the stuff from the pan in a bowl, mixed it up and made some very sloppy loaves with quarters from the pie crust -- I cut the crust dough into quarters, then rolled it out thinner with a rolling pin. You may want to cut them, ball them up, re-roll them and make loaves like empanadas. I was short on time. If you seal them well, take a sharp knife and put slits in the top.

Now I am waiting for them to cook so I can eat them. I'm trying cooking them at 375 even though pie recipes cook hotter.

...

Mmmmm -- I waited until they were crisp but barely brown, and they're YUMMY! They also passed the son test.

Enjoy!
[tags]recipe, spinach, broccoli, garlic, onions, pastry[/tags]

The benefits of natural lawnmowers

Mowing lawns could be hazardous to your health.

Take a somewhat out-of-shape person, give them insufficient liquids, 85 degree (Farenheit) or higher temperatures in the late day sun, about an acre of lawn and a mower and you have a recipe for disaster.

Make that person pig-headedly stubborn about getting the job done in one continuous grueling bout of sheer testosterone and you have heatstroke.

I'm not writing to extoll the virtues or dangers of heatstroke. I want to leave that to the experts.

I want to extoll the virtues of natural lawn mowers.

No more gas guzzling noise polluting mulch making hay spewing 1.5 horsepower rack-n-pinion steering (*cough*) bag-toting machine fury!

No. Just a little fur, some neighborly tolerance, and patience.

I have several lawn mowers. Woodchucks. Rabbits. Deer. If it weren't for the sheer overwhelming SIZE of the lawn, woefully seeded with absolutely useless grass, I probably wouldn't need a lawn mower at all. Give me ground ivy, chickweed, mint, wood sorrel, plantain, dandelion and cleavers any day over 100% useless indigestible grass. While we must have grass, since it's not my lawn, then at least we have our natural lawn mowers. I even have photos -- I've just been too bloody lazy to put my photos into the blog. I have to actually get off my butt and do it ;)

These lawn mowers have many myriad benefits:

• they're eating what most people hate anyway. The woodchuck and rabbits specialize in the little plants between the blades of grass, like dandelions -- the ones the mechanical mower misses anyway. The deer eats young grass -- enough deer and there's no grass to mow in the first place!


• instant composting. As these critters graze, they leave behind yesterdays morsels in a ready-to-use form. Bonus: herbivores don't have i-coli bacteria. The compost is ready for your soil, worms, and all other manners of nitrogen-hungry life


• They're cheap: (what!! No nested lists GRRRR)


• You don't have to pay at the pump


• you don't need to buy or maintain machinery


• you don't add extra wear to your car fetching mowers, oil, gas, parts or taking it in for repairs


• you no longer need to buy fertilizer


• You don't pollute the environment


• When these lawn mowers break down, they biodegrade quickly -- no need to get them hauled away in the trash and have them take up room in a landfill


• they replace themselves


• they provide hours of amusement and possibly food and exercise to your pets

Anyway, here's a billion blessings to our lawn mowers -- they're welcome here any time -- as long as they stay the HECK out of my garden.

[tags]critters, environment, grass, dandelions, plantain, wood sorrel, gratitude, humor, woodchuck, rabbit, deer, rant, expenses, garden, lawn, recycling[/tags]

day lily buds

I knew that day lilys were edible, and I saw them cropping up all around my new house. So I broke out Steve Brill's book -- he being my favorite authority on edibles -- and he mentioned all the various ways people eat day lilys. My mind got caught on day lily bud pickles. When Steve said that the plant no longer propagates via flower, it propagates via rhizomes, I knew I'd hit the jackpot. I bottled some day lily buds in a fairly usual pickle manner last night, and today I'm trying a variation on a day lily bud recipe I found on the internet. In a few weeks I'll be able to say how they taste. But the one I bottled last night is a beautiful red color. I had brined the buds for 12-24 hours (2 batches that I collected over two days), and put a plate on top to weigh them down. Some discolored a little, and some discolored a lot. I should have put them all in the jar and poured the hot vinegar over them, but I discarded some of the most discolored ones. Turns out that everywhere they discolored turned a brilliant red color in the vinegar solution, making a very pretty display if nothing else.

However Steve Brill said that day lily pickle buds are delicious. If it ever stops raining, I'll put pictures of day lilies and their buds online for people to get a good id. There's similar, still edible species (tiger lily), but the day lily has no poisonous look-alikes. As always, pick your plants away from car-ways. You don't want auto emissions on your food.

Also, I use pasta/tomato sauce jars or pickle jars that I've cleaned for making things in vinegar. Vinegar corrodes metal -- normal Ball or canning jars use metal rings and the lids will often corrode. Tomatoes are also corrosive so they use lined jar lids for pasta sauces.

My recipe -- the first batch I used about 1/4 cup salt to 1c water for the brine. I soaked the day lily buds by submerging them in the brine at room temperature (you may try in the fridge, maybe they wont get browned around the edges...) overnight. The following morning I picked more and left the whole lot in the solution until the evening. I created the vinegar pickling mix by filling a similarly-sized jar about 4/5ths or more with 1/2 organic cider vinegar 1/2 white vinegar, about 3/4 to 1c white sugar, about 4 whole cloves, 1/2 tsp coriander, 1tsp fennel seed, 1tsp black peppercorns. Stirred it up, put it in a non-metal saucepan to heat to steaming. You can be more patient than me and boil it :) While waiting, I rinsed the buds from the brine, and lined them up in the jar. Line them up very tightly if possible -- I didn't, and they all floated to the top. I was afraid to squish them too much. When the vinegar solution was ready, I poured it SLOWLY over the top (make sure the jar is warmed so that it does not shatter!), waited for bubbles to float out, poured in more, etc. I attempted to completely cover the buds without having the vinegar touch the lid of the jar. I eventually put the lid on, and turned the whole jar over (use gloves! it's HOT) a few times, re-opened it and poured more solution in. Label the LID of the jar, and turn it over a couple times a day for the first few days, especially if there are buds that aren't quite covered on the top. I'm hoping they eventually get saturated and sink to the bottom.

Today, instead of brine, my recipe calls for boiling the buds for 20 minutes or so -- enough to eat them as a vegetable. I'm using a different pickling solution -- one much less clear, so it won't be as pretty on the shelf. The buds came out of the boiling with the water mainly black, and the buds looking like soggy stringbeans. I put them in the jar, heated the pickling solution and I'm waiting for it to cool so I can put a label on it. This time I did a part apple cider and part white vinegar solution again, but I made about 1/3 of the sugar molasses and the spices were 2 whole cinnamon, 5 whole cloves, and a pinch of allspice powder (I need to get more whole allspice!). I couldn't really pack the jar tightly, but these babies were so tired and waterlogged that they sink easily. At the same time, they have totally lost all firmness and color compared to the brined buds. We'll see how it all turns out.

[tags]day lily, pickles, canning, steve brill, recipe[/tags]

And the green grass grew...

I love my little garden.

It's been struggling. The woodchuck LOVES the greenbean leaves and the spinach.

My first planting of greenbeans was pretty much a disaster. All but two of the plants were eaten by insects or critters. Those two are fertile, flowering, and seem to be a variety that does NOT require fencing or poles to climb on. One has a seed-pod growing already.

My mom and I planted greenbean seeds that are children of her beans from her garden last year. And we planted A LOT. Of those, about half are doing well, and half have been chomped by deer or woodchuck. Those are struggling to bring up leaves again, but I'm afraid they may not make it. I planted more of the organic freestanding beans between the climbing beans that probably won't make it. So that will be 3 crops of beans if any of the 3rd planting make it.

The basil is starting to look healthier, the parsley is growing into it's pre-adolescence. The dill looks great. But the mystery is that the oregano never grew. At all. So I used that area to plant a late batch of tomatoes.

My son's one lonely pea plant is climbing faithfully up one tomato cage and its started to flower. I hope they don't require separate plants to be fertilized.

I put two cages down around the cucumber plants to give them something to climb on, but I'm really afraid they're going to totally overwhelm the cages LOL

I have one more cage for the tomatoes unless I find the other ones that may be buried under the poison ivy.

The spinach is starting to stalk and grow vertical, but many of the baby leaves were trashed by the varmint that has been eating the greenbean leaves wholesale.

Because most of the plants have been struggling, I planted all the rest of the seeds in various places for a free-for-all. Many of the plants can be harvested before they are mature (basil, spinach, parsley, dill), so why not? Nearly all the new seeds I planted are already sprouting above the soil, and will join their more mature brethren.

I've considered fencing in the front side of the garden, but I'm not sure it will inconvenience the critters more than it inconveniences me. Next year, I have to plant the tomatoes all across the front. I only put them across half the front. Hopefully that will be enough of a "nothing interesting here -- now move along" to keep most vermin out (tomato leaves are poisonous -- tomatoes are in the nightshade family, and in the middle ages the fruit of the tomato plant was thought to be poisonous).

Any of my spare seeds I scattered in the wilds around my garden plot. If nature allows them to root and grow, the critters can chomp away. Or they can eat the beans and cut out the middleman ;)

Bees. Some of the largest bumblebees I've ever seen live in my garden. And they don't like me much. They come over and check me out here and there. One decided I was too close to their hive and stung me a little on my eyebrow. Not enough to hurt me too badly, and not enough to rip its stinger off. My eyebrow was unhappy for a couple days, but I did my first aid like a good little mommie so it didn't get too bad. Now I avoid the area where the beehive is. Unfortunately it was a place that my mom and I planned for the beans to vine into. I need alternatives now.

I have wild strawberries all over the wild parts of the yard. Tons of them. But the berries are going to be tiny, which is typical of strawberries that haven't been cultivated or which have escaped from the garden. And there are brambles. I think I have black raspberries, and I'm waiting to find out what the other varieties all around the yard are - I expect blackberries, in abundance.

That's about all the gardening news for now.
[tags]critters, strawberries, stringbeans, berries, spinach, bees, tomatoes, basil, parsley, dill, garden[/tags]

Healing

Dose of common-sense: I'm not prescribing remedies to you. If you want to make your own medicines, get at least a basic education in herbalism first. If you want to do field identification of plants and herbs, get some good field guides, and verify some plants against knowledgeable persons before imbibing.

What a godawful two weeks.

I got something, perhaps a case of Poison Ivy, about two weeks ago. I know because the grass needed to be mowed again. My partner, Chris (yep, two of us), mowed two weeks ago, having bought a new mower. I was a complete IDIOT and tried keeping him company while he did it -- put on some gloves, and went out to prune some of the crazy hedges and bushes out there. I didn't care that the mower was spewing cut grass at me on occasion -- or that I was breathing in the dusty crud that it was pouring out. I clipped hedges, and gathered up armfulls of brush clippings to the margin of the woods to toss on a pile of deadfall we'd been collecting there.

The next morning, I had some bug bites along my right arm, from wrist to about my elbow. I scratched, didn't think much of it. Mosquito, flea, whatever -- something had snacks on my arm all night. So be it.

Then my left leg behind the knee was itching. Again -- didn't think much of it. We have pets, hence fleas, and anything below the knee is game :P *sigh* So again, I did nothing. This is about Friday night or so.

By Sunday I itched in several more areas, but nothing beat the welts behind my knee. I got some hydrocortisone cream. I figured it was a minor itch/allergy and should be treated as same.

On Monday I knew there were serious problems. Where there were two 1" wide welts behind my knee the night before, now the entire area behind my knee was swollen.

By Tuesday I figured out that it was eczema or contact dermatitis. I got a Benadryl dye free equivalent, and a topical version, some health food store remedies, and made my own ointments from herbal oils I had on-hand.

Plantain Ointment

Creating ointments from infused plant oils requires taking the liquid oil medium and adding solidifying agents to it. Usually the goal is to have something solid or semi-solid at room temperature, but which melts upon contact with the skin. Solidifying agents may vary, but my preference is beeswax, as it is natural, healing and nutritive in its own right, and melts easily into the oil. Other options may include saturated plant fats such as palm or coconut oil, lecithin, and sometimes paraffin, but I've never used these for an ointment so I can't recommend them. By varying the amount of beeswax, one can control the solidity of the end product, and you can get anything from a soft cream to lip balm consistency at room temperature.

Create an infused plant oil: Fill a clean jar with fresh, dry-surfaced, plantain (Plantago spp.). Fill the jar again with olive oil, to the very brim, and then seal it with a cap. Let sit a minimum of 6 weeks (2 weeks in an emergency...mine was in the jar for 9-10 years!). (See notes on making infused plant oils later, there are a lot of rules and notes!)

Pour off oil into a (glass or enameled) pan, removing and squeezing out all plant matter. Heat on the absolute lowest heat setting possible before blowing out the burner (or you can heat it on a radiator/riser in your apartment building ;) ), and add beeswax shavings to the tune of about 2 tsp shavings per 4 oz of oil... it's a fine art depending on how solid you want your ointment. Stir with a wooden spoon until all the beeswax is melted. Do not allow to boil! Keep the heat as low as possible. Pour into clean, wide-mouthed jars you can get your finger completely into (preferably glass, possibly metal tins or old plastic cosmetics jars but they need to be heat-tolerant).

What's left in the pan, you can smear on your face, hands, lips, eyes, etc. Did I just say eyes? Well, use your judgement -- but depending on the plants and the oils you use, this is essentially food.

I slathered plantain ointment on the affected areas. I had enough that I made 3 4oz jars of ointment. If you can't picture it, figure it's a large 12oz soda cup full of goo. I still can't say if it helped but it did keep the itching down, and my skin sucked it up like it was starving. That last may be a problem, though, since it fed my skin (yum!) but didn't necessarily lock in the moisture the way something with mineral oil or petroleum jelly would have.

Soon it was a week of intensive itching, I was desperate, and I was no longer satisfied with my normal regime of simples (one herbal remedy at a time). I suspected it might be Poison Ivy (oak, sumac, who cares?). I saw that I was going to run out of ointment at this rate, I got more creative (read: desperate), and I made a jar of ointment (same steps as above) out of lance-leaf plantain that had soaked (for about 10 years) in almond oil, then after filling one jar I added mugwort oil (Artemesia vulgaris) to the pan that had been soaking in olive oil, and a little more beeswax. I poured that into a jar for one jar of plantain/mugwort ointment. Then I punctured and squeezed out about 4 capsules of Vitamin E oil (Carlson E-Gems - d-alpha tocopheryl acetate from soy in sunflower/soybean oil, beef gelatin (?), glycerin and water), and poured a jar of the plantain/mugwort/vitE ointment. Then I added goldenseal powder (Hydrastis canadensis, store purchased), and poured the remaining 3 jars of the huge combo of plantain/mugwort/vitE/goldenseal. In the end I had a total of 6 more jars of ointment. Final 3 jars ingredients, approximated for proportions: olive oil, almond oil, mugwort, plantain, beeswax, vit E and goldenseal powder.

Having plantain and mugwort sitting in oil on my herb shelves for 9 years is a very long time. I simply had no overwhelming need to decant (pour the oil out of) the jars, and I had been slowly edging back into making remedies since moving upstate. However, this was a full all-out plunge back into being an herbalist. I researched, because I didn't see any jewelweed (Impatiens aurea or biflora, a poison ivy remedy) whatsoever in my poison-ivy haven of a yard. Mommy N doesn't work that way -- where there's a problem, there's a cure. Since there was no jewelweed, I knew there must be an alternative cure somewhere in my yard. I looked for eczema remedies. I poured over my class notes from too-many-years-ago. I thought for a moment that I might need to upgrade my field guides -- I upgrade all my techie manuals for programming languages and web languages, don't I? But wait --

Plants don't mutate over 20 years. Of course my field guides are still accurate. :P

And then I found another answer. Cleavers (Galium aparine), a very distinctive little plant, and I had noticed it growing everywhere in my yard. I even had identified the plant instantly by name around the grounds, even though I had never worked with her as a remedy for anything. The suggestions were for using the juice of the plant rather liberally, but I didn't have the heart to take that much of this not-very-juicy plant in order to attempt to make several teaspoons of juice a day. I opted to make a tincture, less effective but much more efficient in use of my green friend -- it wouldn't be ready in time for what is going on now, but I have a feeling this won't be the only time and next time I'll know what's happening and have a (hopeful!) cure handy.

Extracts

A herbal plant extract occurs when plant is infused in a liquid menstruum that breaks down cell wall materials and carries nutrients, minerals, alkaloids, and other active ingredients out of plant materials and into the liquid solution.

Fill a clean jar with clean fresh plant material. Fill it again with your choice of any alcohol, glycerine or vinegar. Preference for 100 Proof vodka, or raw/organic apple-cider vinegar.

Vodka is the most efficient "menstruum" (liquid carrier) and makes a medicine called "a tincture" requiring the lowest amount of liquid per dose. Glycerine menstruums are non-alcoholic and create an "extract", while vinegar menstruums create a "vinegar". Thus you can have cleavers tincture (in alcohol) or extract (in glycerine, but all of these are extracts), or vinegar.

2-6 weeks minimum, then pour off into a new clean jar, squeeze out the plant materials to the best of your ability, seal and label.

Tinctures and glycerine extracts are usually dispensed from dropper bottles, and the dose varies depending on the plant used -- the most potent/poisonous plants usually call for being mixed with other tinctures or teas and 4-5 drops are used, while less strong, nutritive, or edible plants may call for an entire dropper-full of liquid several times a day. Vinegars usually have a dose 2-3 times that of other extracts (perhaps a teaspoon or more, depending on the plant used), are usually used only for plants that are otherwise edible, and may be used in salads to carry the benefits to the user.

You may infuse in rubbing alcohol, which makes a liniment -- FOR EXTERNAL USE ONLY!

Note that vinegars will erode metal -- use a pickle jar to make a vinegar infusion, because the cap is lined to prevent erosion.

I also replenished my stores of plantain oil by starting a jar of plantain oil, and at the same time I started a jar of yarrow oil (Achillea millefolium) and a jar of ground ivy tincture (Glechoma hederacea).

Notes about creating herbal oil infustions

• Do not confuse infused oils with essential oils. They are quite different. Essential oils are made in a laboratory, using distiller equipment. Herbal oil infusions use a liquid oil medium and are soaked for a long period of time (2-6 weeks or longer), and can easily be made in your kitchen.


• If you're in a rush, a quick infused oil can be made by heating your liquid oil gently in a pan, and adding almost an equal amount of plant material to it. Stir, do not allow to boil or burn, and in about an hour you will have an oil that will have most of the properties of a cold-infused oil. In the process of heating the plant, the cell walls break down quicker than soaking in oil over time, but you sacrifice heat-sensitive agents and nutrients in the end product, both from the oil you choose and the plant.


• Olive oil has its own healing properties (as do other types of oil) and a good cold-pressed extra virgin oil, while expensive, has tremendous healing qualities in itself. If you can't afford or don't have the best oil on hand, any liquid cooking oil will do in a pinch.


• When making oils it is exceptionally important that there is no water on your plant materials before you add them to the jar. Some "sweating" occurs when fresh plant materials are placed into plastic baggies, so when buying or collecting fresh herbs, put them in paper bags for better results. If there is too much water on your herbs when placing them in the jar, you may end up with mold in your oil.


• If mold develops in your oil, transfer clean materials to a clean jar, discard any dubious materials, and top off with oil.


• Keep the jar full to the top -- this also prevents mold.


• Filling the jar to the top with oil may cause seepage -- oil has a way of finding its way through the lid. Place on a surface that will not mar from oil, or place in a bowl.


• Expect that the plant materials will swell and release air bubbles, poke down the plant materials with a clean bamboo chopstick or a clean undyed popsicle stick, shake the jar to loosen air bubbles and allow them to float to the top. Then top off the jar with more oil.


• Keep infusions out of the sun, unless you are using sun &/or moonlight to add additional (presumably magical) properties to the infusion.


• If your house is moldy, clean your jars and boil them before making infusions.


• Edible plants in edible oils make edible infused oils. You can create infused oils of garden herbs, for example. Pesto is something similar to an infused oil, except that you blend the basil and other ingredients in instead of squeezing them out at the end. Use sparingly, as garden herbs may have powerful effects in concentration. For example, add 1tbs infused oregano oil to a salad dressing or marinade. Be careful when making oils from other non-leafy cooking plant parts, such as garlic, as they may contain too much water and cause your oil to spoil.


• If your oil gets very "gassy" -- a lot of air bubbles causing excessive leaking of oil out of the cap -- check for spoilage or mold.


• Leaking oil makes it VERY difficult to put an adhesive label on a jar. Label the outside of the bowl you place it in, put the label on the top of the cap of the jar, or use a permanent marker on the outside glass of the bottle before starting to make the infusion -- you can remove the markings later with rubbing alcohol, but they should survive being leaked on with oil.

The good news is that in spite of (or perhaps aided by) my attempts to self-medicate, the eczema/dermititis is fading off. I have no idea whatsoever whether what I did to myself helped or not -- I know I suffered a great deal of intolerable itching, weeping, large portions of both legs covered in dry itchy patches, peripheral itching over my arms, back and belly with mild bumps and redness, skin peeling, etc. No cracking or bleeding, which is probably only thanks to the aggressive moisturizeing/nourishing of my skin.