Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World (16 page)

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Medicinal Honey

PREPARATION:
5 min

WAITING:
1+ days

Unpasteurized (raw) honey, which you can buy at the farmers’ market from beekeepers—or, better yet, produce in your own hive—is one of nature’s great gifts. Not only is it delicious, but it has potent antibacterial and antifungal properties. As we noted in Project 13, it can be used to treat wounds and to soothe sore throats and coughs. It is also a fine vehicle for herbal medicine.

When you get a new jar of honey, invest a little time in making a few small jars of medicinal honey. You’ll be glad you have them when you need them. If you can’t find raw honey, use regular honey.

All you have to do is fill a clean, dry jar—a small one, like a jam jar—with chopped fresh herb or roots and cover the herb with honey. If the honey is too thick to pour, try stirring it or, if you must, warm it gently in a bath of warm water. Whatever you do, don’t overheat raw honey, and definitely don’t put it in the microwave. You want to keep those healing properties active.

Put a cover on the jar, label it, and let it sit for a while. You can start using honey infusions after a day, but they become more potent over time. After 4 to 6 weeks, strain out the plant matter to make the honey more palatable. Each infusion will last a long time in the cupboard, or you could opt to keep it in the fridge. Take herbed honey by the spoonful, stir it into hot water or tea, or apply it to the skin.

Here are some variations you may want to try, but you should also experiment with any herbs you like to create both medicinal and culinary honeys.

GARLIC HONEY

Fill a jar halfway with whole, peeled garlic cloves and cover with honey. Take garlic honey when you suspect a cold is coming on, to combat throat infections, or to treat wounds. Garlic honey is also a tasty glaze on meat or vegetables.

GINGER HONEY

Peel gingerroot and cut into thin coins. Cover the pieces with honey and let steep. Ginger honey makes a nice, aromatic addition to tea or hot water for general use or for sipping when you have a cold. A spoonful will help settle an upset stomach.

SAGE HONEY

Fill a jar loosely with chopped fresh leaves and cover with honey. Sage is a strong antibacterial herb. Combined with honey, it makes a powerful healing syrup for coughs and sore throats or a salve for wounds.

CHAMOMILE OR CATNIP HONEY

Fill a jar almost to the top with fresh chamomile buds or chopped catnip leaves. Cover with honey. Both herbs work to soothe and relax an overactive mind. Take a spoonful at bedtime or stir it into tea.

PEPPERMINT HONEY

Fill a jar with fresh peppermint leaves and add as much honey as will fit. The cooling properties of peppermint make this a good honey for cold and flu symptoms, like sore throat, congestion, and coughs. A spoonful might help soothe your stomach if you’ve overeaten.

ROSE HIP HONEY

Rose hips, the small red fruits that appear on rosebushes in the fall, are packed with vitamin C. Rose hip honey is a delicious vitamin C supplement and a sweet-tart condiment for general use. You can pick rose hips from plants that you know haven’t been sprayed with pesticides or buy the hips dried. Sample the fresh rose hips before you pick them: Some varieties of rose make tastier hips than others. The best time to harvest hips is after the first frost, when the hips turn sweet and go slightly soft.

The good parts of the hips are the skins and the pulp that surrounds the inner core. The core is filled with seeds, and the seeds are covered with tiny hairs that are skin irritants. Kids used to collect the seeds and deploy them as itching powder. Needless to say, you want to avoid eating the seeds. There are two ways to manage this. The first is to use the pods whole. The second is to chop the hips, extract the juice, and then strain off the seeds and solids. Both methods are described below.

ROSE HIP SYRUP #1:
Pick fresh rose hips. Wash them and trim off the stem and blossom ends, but leave the hips whole. Submerge them in honey or layer them with dry sugar. In the case of the sugar, the juices of the hips will leach out and turn the sugar into a syrup. The honey will thin into a syrup. After about a month, strain off the solids.

ROSE HIP SYRUP #2:
Chop fresh or dried rose hips in a food processor. Put them in a saucepan, cover with water, and simmer for about 20 minutes. Strain through cheesecloth or a coffee filter. Measure the juice and add an equal amount of honey to make a syrup.

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Foraging Feral Greens

We consider the wide world of weeds our second garden. Anytime we’re out walking, we’ve got an eye out for food and medicine. Wild greens supplement our garden produce and fill in the gaps between harvests. They’re the ultimate in local cuisine.

To learn to identify feral plants, seek out wild food experts in your area who offer guided walks. Field books help, but firsthand experience is the best way to learn. While every region has its own distinctive wild edibles and medicinal plants, there are a few ubiquitous weeds that can be found all over North America. Here we describe a few of our favorites and give you some hints on hunting them.

If you do go hunting, always be certain of your plant identifications. If you’re not sure about your identification, just pass the plant by. If you taste a plant and don’t like it, don’t eat it. This might sound obvious, but sometimes new foragers eat foods they don’t like out of misguided machismo (or masochism!). A large part of working with the wild ones is learning to trust your palate and your instincts.

CHICKWEED
(Stellaria media)
is a low-growing, pretty little green that grows in cool weather, so you’ll find it in early spring and autumn but not in midsummer. It grows just about everywhere. Look for it on shady slopes, under trees, and as an undergrowth among taller weeds. Chickweed grows in masses rather than as single plants. It has small, smooth, pointed green leaves that grow in opposing pairs and tiny white flowers. Distinguish it from similar-looking plants by its distinctive flowers, the single line of hairs running down its stalk, and by the
absence
of milky sap. Chickweed’s mild flavor makes it an excellent addition to salads. It’s also a pi cooling and soothing medicinal properties, it’s often used in oils, salves, and poultices for irritated skin.

MALLOW
(Malva parviflora).
Also called cheeseweed, this not-so-attractive and all-too-common weed is quite edible. The leaves can be used in salads or as a cooked green. It doesn’t have much flavor, so we usually cook it with lots of garlic and hot pepper. What it lacks in flavor, it makes up for in availability and reliability. While many of the more tasty and delicate weeds don’t outlast the spring, mallow produces reliably well into the summer. It might be a little bland, but it is never as bland as supermarket greens. And like most weeds, mallow is very nutritious. Look for it in any sunny, untended urban or suburban space, such as median strips and vacant lots.

MULLEIN, COMMON
(
Verbascum thapsus
). Mullein plants are attractive if you like bold, untamed things. Their leaves are distinctive: huge, soft, velvety, and gray green in color. They grow in a rosette pattern from a single point, piling upward to become taller and taller. When the plant matures, it sends up spectacular stalks covered with small yellow flowers. These stalks can be over 6 feet tall. In the spring, look for the large leaves growing low to the ground in sunny spaces with disturbed soil, like vacant lots. If you have trouble finding mullein, just wait, because mullein is hard to miss once it puts up its huge flower stalk.

Mullein leaves have demulcent, expectorant, and anti-inflammatory properties. Make them into teas and tinctures for coughs and respiratory problems—just be sure to filter the tea before drinking to remove any of the leaf fuzz, which might be irritating to the throat.

PLANTAIN, COMMON
(Plantago major).
This is a low plant with broad, veined leaves that grow from a central point, from which it throws up pencil-like seed stalks when mature. This useful plant is widely derided as a weed. Like the dandelion, it’s the bane of lawn owners, but it’s not as flashy as the dandelion, so you may have never noticed it. Yet it’s there, waiting for you. Look for it starting in the early spring in any open grassy area (where you’re sure people haven’t been spraying chemicals).

Plantain can be eaten as a salad green when it’s young—older leaves are too tough. However, its best use is as medicine, as a topical treatment for bites and boils and other skin eruptions and irritations. In herbal speak, it’s a “drawing herb.” Chew on a plantain leaf and rub it on bug bites to make them stop itching. It’s also an astringent plant, meaning it will help stop bleeding. Use oil infused with plantain to make a skin salve.

STINGING NETTLE
(
Urtica dioica
). These plants can be foraged in most parts of the country and are in no danger of being overharvested. Most people have some experience with their sting. Perhaps nettles are wicked because they know they are so good. Nettles are one of the most nutritious greens we know of—if not
the
most. Prepare young nettles as you would any green. The stingers cook off with even a light steaming. Nettles are not superflavorful, but they can be tricked up with spices or combined with more flavorful greens. When they get too big and tough to eat, dry them and make them into a nutritious tea. Nettle teas have long been enjoyed as spring tonics. Drink nettles or eat them when you feel malnourished and depleted. Nettle infusions are also good for the hair and scalp. The nutrients in nettles can be transferred to your garden by composting the plants or by making a strong nettle brew to use as fertilizer.

In the spring, we eat nettles fresh, and we gather and dry nettles whenever we can so we always have lots on hand. Search for stinging nettles in shady, damp places—though sometimes they set up camp in unlikely spots. They’re easy to recognize once you know what to look for: leafy plants that grow straight up, with rounded, matte, serrated, slightly textured leaves that terminate in points. They look a little like spearmint. In the early spring, they are quite small and tender; later in the year, they can grow shoulder high. Harvest the upper parts (the newer growth) using shears and work gloves or kitchen gloves. It’s wise to wear long pants and closed-toe shoes, too. Nettles never give up without a fight. If you do get stung, apply a paste of baking soda and water

OXALIS OR WOOD SORREL
(Oxalidaceae, the wood sorrel family, including
Oxalis stricta, O. montana,
and
O. pes-caprae).
These low-growing plants have distinctive, shamrock-shaped leaves and pretty flowers that may be white, purple, or yellow, depending on the variety. The flowers, leaves, and stems are all edible and have a bright, tart lemon flavor that makes them an excellent garnish or addition to salads. Oxalis is high in vitamin C.

For all its delicate beauty, oxalis is a tough, invasive plant. Here in our home turf of California, buttercup oxalis
(O. pes-caprae)
swamps yards and median strips every spring, then dies back as soon as the weather heats up. To us, oxalis is the first taste of spring, and we crave it all winter long. We’ve heard plenty of complaints from people who claim oxalis is taking over their yards—to which we’d reply they’re obviously not eating enough of it. Any edible plant that volunteers in our yard is more than welcome to make itself at home. A plant with similar flavor and uses is ordinary garden sorrel
(Rumex rugosus),
which can be found growing feral in many places, as well as its wild sister,
R. acetosella,
known as sheep sorrel or sour grass.

Note:
Oxalis is rich in oxalic acid and thus should be approached with caution by people suffering from kidney problems, gout, and rheumatoid arthritis as well as by those who are prone to kidney stones.

Other edible weeds you might like to try, if you can find them in your neighborhood, include purslane
(Portulaca oleracea),
lamb’s-quarters
(Chenopodium album),
miner’s lettuce
(Claytonia perfoliata),
garlic mustard
(Alliaria petiolata),
and various wild mustards, like wild white mustard
(Sinapis alba),
and of course, dandelion
(Taraxacum officinale).