Cardamom

Each month at our Flora meeting I give little treats. Often of new products for everyone to try, a tea, perfume or balm that we sell. I also like to share a bit of tincture or herb that seems right for the season, or just that I have an abundance of.
This month we had two meetings as we spent much of the first one putting finishing touches on the pop-up shop that opened November 8th. That meeting we had lots of chocolate.
Another meeting followed a week later. I presented cardamom pods with a few tips on how to I use them and I realized I did not know exactly how they grow.

Cardamom is one of my favorite ingredients in perfumery as well as cooking, but not one I have too deep of knowledge about.

Here are a few interesting things to know about this magic pod:
Cardamom belongs to the Ginger family.

Cardamom is one of the most expensive spices, only vanilla and saffron are more dear.

Cardamom is not only used in Indian and Middle Eastern cooking, but is also a key ingredient in the Finnish bread, Pulla.

In the middle East cardamom is often ground up with coffee to create a magical hot drink.

Cardamom is, of course, a key ingredient in Chai or Masala Chai. There are a million variations of Chai, but if you're not including cardamom, it can't be that good.

One of our favorite teas at Flora is our house blended Dandelion Chai, which boasts a huge percentage of gorgeous organic cardamom pods.

Wrigley made a chewing gum with cardamom not so long ago, but made claims that it would "neutralize the toughest mouth odor" and now is off the market due to a class action law suit.

It is suggested that if you are out of cardamom, you can substitute equal parts cinnamon and nutmeg.
I'm not sure how I feel about this, but in a pinch, go for it.

Cardamom is a traded commodity. Maybe everything is.

Cardamom (purported) health benefits include
Digestive stimulant
reduces bad breath
reduces heartburn
can help with IBS
nourishes the kidneys and bladder
anti-oxidant
high in iron and potassium
can help with sore mouth and throat

Cardamom pods can be chewed like gum and kill germs in the gums, making your breath fresh.

All cardamom is handpicked.


This is by no means a full description of this amazing plant, rather a few tidbits to go along with the bags of cardamom pods handed out at a meeting.
xo

Perfumery and kindred arts

A beautiful passage from Perfumery and kindred arts : 
a comprehensive treatise on perfumery 
by R.S.Cristiani
1877

"The Greeks, whose deities were as numerous as the stars, almost always associated perfumes with the presence of the gods and goddesses, and attributed skill in the compounding of perfumes to the marvelous, and gave the name of magicians to those who prepared them.

Venus is described as sprinkled with perfumes, and Pallas (Athena), the goddess of wisdom, anointed with oil when practicing the exercises of the palastra, and to their use is attributed the great beauty of Helen of Troy.

Perfumes were generally supposed to possess great medicinal virtues, so much so as to cause the recipes for many of the most celebrated essences and cosmetics 
to be inscribed on marble tablets in some of their temples. The rose in those days was considered no less beneficial than beautiful, and formed the basis of many remedies."

All Natural Solid Perfumes

I have been making solid perfumes for a dozen years or so and even though they are the solid form of perfumery, they seem to be the most evasive and ephemeral in terms of continuity and commitment.
I worked feverishly and obsessively on a set of balms in 2007 that were inspired by my study of the art and spirituality of color. I created a set of five perfumes that evoked not only a color, but the energy and spirituality of that color.
While they were amazing, I had gotten carried away by the color, in reality, of the balms to the point that the gesture was muddied.
For example, I used Blue Chamomile oil, which is firstly, expensive and secondly does not offer the perfect blue scent in the amounts I had to use to make it the right color. Cacao in the brown perfume and so on.
We at Flora loved them and made amazing and amazingly complicated packaging for them that entailed tons of very precise cutting and oh dear, I just want to make perfume.

Customers didn't really get it and there were issues with the containers, as they were chosen for their color, rather than functionality.
 
Fast forward to 2012 and we are back in it!
Focus: Solid perfumes, the importance of color gesture, packaging that is gorgeous and very functional.

We are bringing them back!

The new labels have arrived, new packaging has been procured and the ingredients are all waiting in line.

The cards we made all those years ago? Still perfect. 

 

The re-lauch will be at Crafty Wonderland's Spring Sale. May 12th 2012.

It's time.
xo

Calendula

Sunny Ladies

Calendula likes to reseed itself and it's really good at it, yet over the years I have heard that it's good to re-plant new seed to strengthen the flowers.
I resisted for years because I figured the seed was just perfect, having grown right there and replanted itself. A small miracle, really.
But last year I did buy new seed and replanted my garden and lo and behold if they aren't the most lovely early bloomers!
This is their first year of reseeding and some of the plants even survived the winter.
I have grand plans for more production this year which, lucky for me, means being in the garden with my plant lovelies more.

Elecampane Harvest

A few weeks ago I woke up after a long night of coughing looking for elecampane tincture only to find the bottle as well as it’s mother jar empty.
Without stopping to grab a cup of tea, I walked outside in the rain with my slippers on and dug through the bare garden bed for clues to where elecampane is. I spy little red tops and feel around in the dirt to estimate the size of the root, then plunge the shovel in just once to loosen the deep soil. There are many shoots that radiate off of the main shoot so you have to be careful to not cut them with the shovel.
I am crouched, still coughing, asking the plants: "who wants to help me?" There are three big roots. I dig around in the cold dirt with my bare hands and am able to get all of the many fingered roots until I pull out an enormous root that looks like an ancient sea creature.
I hose it off, bring it inside and begin deciding how much I can use, how much I need and which parts I will replant again.
With my best knife I begin cutting off the roots, lining them up and slicing them like carrots into little rounds.
I throw some ugly pieces into a pot of water with fresh ginger so I can have tea as soon as possible.
Some of the roots go into a jar with diluted organic ethanol for a tincture that will have a ten plus year shelf life. Some of the roots go into another jar that I cover with hot honey, which will be an amazing liver and lung tonic when added to tea. The remainder I fill a parchment lined cookie sheet with to let dry.
The tea is ready, my cough is subsiding and it’s time to re-plant the parts of the root that will re-grow new medicine this year and next. I say blessings and give thanks.
It’s taken a couple of hours, but now there is a specific kind of medicine for coughs, lung ailments and grief. A bitter tonic for digestion as well as a grounding, focusing energy that is calming without making you sleepy.
The photo below is the hollowed out place where I harvested from a couple of years ago, the pink shoots are the newest growth. I re-planted nearly all of the pink shoots.
They will likely flower this summer.

Losing Faith and Coughing Like Crazy

Late November through December for those in retail it's like tax time for an accountant.
The beginning of December I found myself feeling just a little under the weather.
I was confident that with some tea and tinctures I would be just fine in a few days.
As time passed I seemed to be getting a little worse not better.
I did all of the things that make sense, including good food and good sleep and I kept up with the tinctures and teas.
By mid December, as the store was at its peak of business, I spent a great deal of each day with a cough drop tucked inside my cheek, sipping tea and coughing into the crook of my arm.
I could feel the deep wet tidal feeling in my lungs.
I knew it was pneumonia.
I focused on hitting it hard. I dug through my herb room and found fresh golden seal tincture I had made nearly a decade ago, harvested from an organic grower in Washington.
I poured it straight from the big bottle by the teaspoon, not even bothering with a dropper.

My new, more focused, regimen went something like this:
Tea: Drink 2 mugs in AM and 6 mugs at night of
fresh organic ginger root sliced into rounds - about a dozen thin slices and Elecampane roots boiled with apple peels
then adding lemon juice and lots of local honey.
The ginger was keeping my stomach from being upset and helped with the killer heartburn I was having.

During the day I drank nourishing herbal teas from Flora.
Bright green herbals Everyday Magic and Emerald Healing were my go-to teas to balance my morning and evening deep earthy spicy blends much like our house blend Middle Earth, which we were sadly out of the last couple of weeks of December.

I had to switch to sugar-free ricola cough drops so I wouldn't rot my teeth since I was going through an entire bag every couple of days.
Tinctures of
Usnea - anti biotic & drying
Goldenseal - toning, soothing, drying, anti microbial.
Wild Cherry Bark - to stop the terrible tickle and coughing
Ginger - is good for everything - calming & soothing to the gut - heats & moves cold stuck things
Elecampane - is a panacea for me - lung specific, heals deep grief and heals the lungs and throat
Propolis - harvested locally -anti biotic and anti inflammatory
Echinacea - immune tonic
Oregon Grape - anti bacterial and toning
Eight hours sleep every night - lucky
Bone broths - low boil for 8 hours - 4 hours one night, refrigerate and 4 the next is fine
tons of greens - nourishing & sustaining
After a week of this I could feel the intense watery-ness in my lungs retreating. But I was still feeling terrible.
I was coughing so much and so hard that it hurt.
As I am not much of a complainer and often an avoider, it was easy to deal with only the most obvious symptoms at any given time.
Also, it should be noted that I was working at least 10 hours a day, at least 7 of them talking, six days a week.

My sweetie asked me if maybe I should see a doctor, I scoffed. No way, why would I?
Later that same day as I lie on top of the covers in only a towel, still wet from the shower, I cried from the pain of coughing and I realized, yes, this is might be a good time to call the doctor.
I was able to see my acupuncturist the following day.
He asked if I had gotten chest x-rays. Again I scoffed.
He let me know that lung issues can be very serious.
"I know that's why I'm here. I trust you and here I am. Give my lungs some love and help me kick this."
He did some complicated tapping to confirm that the deep lungs were no longer watery depths.
He needled me and checked my pulses and we were both comforted to know that in a few days I would see my naturopath.

Before I even took a seat on the sofa at the naturopath's she said "sounds like whooping cough".
We went over the whole story of the progression of symptoms throughout the month.
It seems that yes, there was some time with pneumonia as well.
Luckily that part had passed and yet I was still wrecked with coughing and now that the adrenaline of December had passed I was incredibly annoyed that I was still sick.

As soon as the dreaded crud I had been carrying around with me was diagnosed as whooping cough I was relieved.
The doctor was surprised by my reaction.
It wasn't until that moment that I realized how stressful it had been the last month to be coughing like my lungs might leave my body.
The deep questioning I felt each night as I lay in bed going over my treatment plan and wondering what I was doing wrong was awful.
What's the nausea and heartburn about?
The main problem wasn't in my treatment but in my diagnosis.
I was working under the assumption that I had pneumonia and although difficult and slow I know (knock on wood) how to take care of it.

Pertussis! A childhood ailment that I hadn't considered.

She assured me that I was right on with all that I was doing and it was the reason I was able to continue to work.

To my then current treatment she gave me a couple of homeopathic remedies, had me add fresh chopped garlic with honey, *mustard packs and *heel drops.

I cried a bit with relief on the drive home. Realizing only after, that my mind was drumming up terrible scenarios of pregnancy, what with the nausea and heartburn. Or worse, Lung cancer, emphysema or thyroid cancer.
The sorrow I was feeling about questioning my herbal knowledge was relieved as well.

Luckily, the contagious state is long gone. I have no idea who may have infected me or if I (hopefully not) passed it along before my symptoms came on.

The ways in which we can take care of ourselves depend greatly on our ability to see the situation.
I was having difficulty seeing the whole picture for reasons I have already stated, but also because it was the Holidays. Capital H.
We also had a death in the family so there were a lot of reasons to be distracted.
Also, I am super competent and rarely does anyone question me. So when I am in a terrible state and I question friends after the fact they will say "you seemed like you knew what you were doing."
Let that be a lesson. Sometimes you have to let your guard down so others can help.

Alea, the newest Flora girl did send me home on a particularly bad day.
She was all "Um, we have a big season ahead of us, why don't you go home, we've got this covered".
I knew it must be bad.
Thanks Alea.

I have read that whooping cough is sometimes called "The 100 days of coughing"
I am over 40 days in and I hope that all of the hard work I have invested may shorten my bout with this crazy beast.

here's to my health and yours
xo

btw
The nausea and heartburn?
From the hernia caused by the coughing.
The naturopath is having me do heel drops, which began to relieve my symptoms very quickly.

Mustard Plaster mix 3 tablespoons flour+ 1 tablespoon dry mustard into a paste with warm water
place thin muslin directly on the chest/lung area
spread mustard mixture onto cloth
cover with another piece of muslin
top with a hot wet (wrung out) towel
let sit for 10 minutes
*be careful of sensitive nipples, the mustard gets hot!

Heel drops- Drink a couple of glasses of water, and then stand on your tippy toes then drop your heels down firmly. Do this 15 to 20 times once a day.

Elderberries & Jam

‎8 cups berries. I used 6 blackberries and 2 elderberries. 5 cups sugar. a dozen little garden sage leaves. bring to a boil, then let it boil for 2 minutes. add 2 tsp agar powder. boil 1 more minute. pour into hot sterilized jars. voila!