A Beginner’s Guide to Healing Plants and Herbs
Herbs in Your Kitchen that Heal
Table of Contents
Herbs in Your Kitchen and to Heal
Introduction
How to Make Herb Biscuits
Making Herb Butters
Green Butter
Making Natural Green Dye for Your Butters
Herb Waters for Perfumed Uses
Lavender Vinegar
Essential oils
Herbal Teas
List of Herbal Teas
Angelica
Coriander
Dandelion
Balm
Bergamot
Elderflower
Hyssop
Dill and Caraway seeds
Parsley
Marigold petals
Mint
Chamomile
Borage
Rue
Sage
Rosemary
Thyme
Anise
Lime flowers- Linden- – also known as Tilleul- teey- uhl.
Lime flowers Sirop
Tomato Cream Sauce
Traditional White Sauce – Béchamel
Conclusion
Appendix
How to make Rose Water
Rosewater through Steam Condensation
Conversion units.
Author Bio
Introduction
A keen young budding botanist once asked me, “Ma’am, how do we know the difference between herbs, shrubs and trees?” Well, the answer is that a majority of herbal plants are definitely soft stemmed and smaller in size when compared to shrubs which are woody and often branched. Herbs are annuals and sometimes perennials. Shrubs are perennials like trees. And trees are definitely different, because they have long woody trunks, which are branched, grow to huge heights, and live really long.
Herbs have been used since ancient times, for medicinal value, and also for cookery purposes. Shrubs are mainly ornamental plants, with their leaves and flowers being used as culinary accompaniments, and also for medicinal purposes. Herbs can be shrubs. Shrubs can be herbs.
Woody stemmed bushes like rosemary, thyme, lavender, winter savory, and Sage come in the herbal category. The serious use of plants in medicine is in the province of homeopathic practitioners and natural herbalists who employ most species of herbs from mosses to trees in making their herbal remedies.
This book is going to give you an introduction to some of the herbs, which are easy to grow and you can obtain easily fresh or dried.
How did people get to know about herbs in ancient times? The awareness of the edible as well as the remedial qualities of herbs must have been gained by happy and sad experiences in prehistoric days. When food was scarce and often very nasty, pungent herbs made it more palatable. The larger succulent leaves, and plants provided salads and vegetables as an accompaniment to hunted mastodons and other prehistoric beasties.
Soon, man found out that some of these herbs could cure and heal wounds and ease suffering, as even the tastiest culinary herb has a real medicinal value and virtue. This is how prehistoric man found out that Moss – sphagnum – was an excellent healer of wounds. Just imagine he went hunting and got into an argument with a sabertooth. And there he was with wounds all over his body, lying nose down on the mossy ground.
So he found himself clutching a handful of moss, squeezing it, and trying to stop the blood flow from the wounds. Hey, the Moss was so absorbent, that it stopped the wound from bleeding any more. So back he came back to his tribal camp with Moss sticking all over his body. After a week or so, he noticed that his wounds were healing really well.
Now, most of this was just by trial and error, and luck. His genetic makeup was strong, and his diet conducive to good natural healing. But that meant that the next time he went on the warpath with other tribes in the vicinity, he made sure that the healer had packed lots of sphagnum, along with food in a pouch for every warrior.
Early civilizations inherited this knowledge and developed it even further, and both doctors and cooks used herbs appreciatively and with increasing beneficial effects.
Doctors experimented with every kind of plant and cooks with the more deliciously flavored types.
