Duluth Apothecary

01/16/2023

Chai break! ☕️

Taking a moment to celebrate a successful creation of roasted dandelion chai. It’s going out as part of a winter wellness package & I’m just finishing up the final touches.

…

‘Chai’ means tea in Hindi (India) 🇮🇳, though in the west we often think of it as spiced black tea.

has some lovely seasonal chai recipes in her book 📕 “Soma: 100 Heritage Recipes for Self-Care”

This recipe is loosely based off the winter version, though with roasted dandelion root in place of the black tea.

…

My husband and I sat down for exactly 10 seconds to enjoy it and snap a pic before one of the kids fell and hurt themselves. 🫠
But it was a very tasty 10 seconds!!

01/04/2023

A dream of mine came true today…
Or maybe 2023 will be my year of manifestation!
🌈✨🌙💫💚🌳

01/01/2023

Food preservation as a revolutionary act ✌🏼🫶

These jars are filled with goodies for food and teas that will nourish my family throughout the year.
AND, it took very little time and effort. I either foraged while out playing with the kids, walking the dog, etc. I pretty much never arrive home from an excursion with empty pockets 😂

The green jar is a yummy veggie bouillon made from dried veggie scraps and stuff foraged straight outta my back yard! onion, garlic scapes and celery salt (from leaves of celery), green carrot tops, parsley, lambs quarters and salt. Blend it up and:
✌🏼reduce your carbon food print
✌🏼reduce dependence on factory farms
✌🏼increase personal health and reduce stress on medical system
✌🏼save 💵 and reduce stress in your life (huge contribution to your health!)

So much more I can say! What I can’t use immediately, I dry or freeze for later use.
And I started with just focusing on one thing that I really liked (berries), and slowly expanded from there.

This year, we have a pantry full of rose hips, dandelion roots (roasted for delicious tea), greens for soups and flavoring dishes, jams, syrups, cordials and more.

One of my favorite things I started making this year were flavored salts - just using leftover scraps of onions, celery tops, etc - blend it up with some salt and spread it on a tray to dry (food dehydrator or the oven 140F), and BOOM. We can make veggie dips, bloody Mary’s (if you’re into that) and all manner of tasty things from our own cabinet. And the potency of the plant medicine when you make your own vs buying something - who knows how old - off of a store shelf?!

It’s small steps towards a more sustainable world, a happier and healthier family, community and self.

Love, plants, peace & fight the power
♥️🌱✌🏼🫶

02/21/2022

I wish a picture could convey this delectable smell of roasting dandelion roots. Mmmmmmmmmm….

Such a good bitter to add during the late winter/spring time. Bitter taste helps digestion and certain bitters help the liver. The liver helps to regulate the rest of the endocrine system (hormone balancing) as well as cleansing the body of toxins…a natural process that the body does at this time of year.

Shall I make dandelion coffee or dandelion chai? ☕️

**ds

01/08/2022

Makes my mouth water just to look at the list...we are a ways away from foraging greens in Duluth, but it’s something to look forward to!! 🤤

01/08/2022

Do I purposefully plan my winter biking routes to check on the beautiful droops of bright red high bush cranberry? Yes, yes I do.

Who can resist such a vibrant splash of color in the winter snowscape?

Sadly, with all the unusually warm weather we had after the first frost, I wasn’t able to get out and gather any this fall. They have fermented on the trees, so if you see erratic behavior from the birds and squirrels near Duluth this year...know that they are probably drunk off high bush cranberry 🥂 🐿 🐦😂

It’s still such a treasure hunt to find them in the woods!
That color....
♥️❤️😍

12/03/2021

COMMUNITY AS MEDICINE
🤱👩🏽‍🎤👨🏾‍⚕️👩🏼‍🏫👩🏽‍🚒👨🏻‍✈️👵

The importance of community support for individual wellbeing is something I ponder often.

People are community creatures, and even the most introverted among us (me 😂) were never meant to do this thing called living by ourselves.

What does community care look like to you?? It can be so different, also depending on my capacity on a given day.

🍲 maybe bringing soup when someone has just had a surgery

☎️ maybe calling or texting to check in with someone

☕️ maybe my friend drops a to-go coffee on my front steps when I’ve had a tough day

🤱🏻today I’m thinking of how parents of new babies especially can use community support, and in a way that social structure in the US is not well set up for. I was lucky with both babes - Yoga North community blessed us with months of meals after the both births. 🙏🏼

But there are ways that even just presence and HOW we show up can support each others wellbeing.

I want to see each other’s messy lives and laugh about them together. Support each other through the rough bits, knowing that support will come back around in moments of need.

👶 🏡
Bringing baby 1 home from the hospital, I felt a visceral longing to return to a home full of aunties, grannies and sisters who could guide me through the liminal space of becoming a parent, rather than the empty solitude of a single family home. I was nervous to introduce baby 2 into the family, and spent my third trimester interviewing parents of multiples what their best practices were for caring for multiple children and themselves.

🤱🏻Today I got to draw on my home apothecary to support a new mama. Sometimes I feel a little like a squirrel, stashing botanical goodies away for “just in case”. But today I perfectly had some things on hand to support!

😴 Sleep pillow filled with some delightful, aromatics

💤 hops tincture to support rest

🖐 lotion bar to delight all senses & have mini-pampering throughout the day

🍵 raspberry leaf, oat straw, milky oats & nettle tea

Look around you, friends, and reach out to one another 🤲🏻🤝

11/28/2021

Herbal sleep pillows....

This will probably become a cute DIY post at some point soon, but for now I just want to say a few things:

-as a yoga therapist (that’s my day job, back before I unexpectedly became a pandemic stay at home mommy), the top things people seek support with: chronic pain, sleep, digestion, stress/anxiety.

-Although the adjustment is not easy, a large part of my being sighs with relief when the darkest time of year approaches. It’s the time of year where everything cozy happens, I slow down and get to vibe out on creative projects. Plants and kids take all of my creative energy! When I’m not tending to outdoor plants and projects , I’m grateful to have time and energy for reflection and creative handwork after kids are in bed.

-I found the cutest fabric for making herbal sleep pillows for the CSA!! (Community Supported Apothecary). These woodland friends will be stuffed with sleepy-time aromatic herbs and hopefully will contribute to a whole lot of relaxation for some beloved people.

11/08/2021

Sunday funday - experiments with HOMEMADE BITTERS

Before prohibition, many medicines that are now served and prepared as syrups were alcohol-based sipping liqueur, like cordials. Wild cherry cordial for coughs became cherry-flavored cough syrup, for example.

Somehow bitters snuck in under the radar despite prohibition and people could continue to produce and use bitters (bitter herbs extracted in alcohol) for “medicinal” use 😉

Traditional Medicinals

&
both have some nice recipes available if it’s something you’d like to read about or try yourself.

Bitter taste can aid digestion, help bile secretion, and is an overall tonic for the liver and digestive organs. Since digestion is both how the body takes in nutrients and an important system that expels toxins, good functioning digestion is something I’ve always viewed as a cornerstone of wellbeing.

For the bitter taste in this recipe, I used some recently gathered dandelion roots, along with some herbs added for their digestive support and flavor: ginger, orange peel, wild chamomile (pineapple w**d) and calendula.

Tomorrow, I will try to remember to blend up the mixture as the herbs will extract more quickly and completely the smaller they are chopped. Top with more alcohol, and shake daily for 2-6 weeks, then strain and voila!

Can be taken before meals, in case of indigestion, gas or just used for fun in cocktails and mock tails, added to fizzy water, baked goods...it’s a fun playground for experimenting with tastes.

Bitter is probably one of the LEAST utilized flavors in standard American cooking. And this medicinal concoction is a wonderful way to weave bitter taste into a diet!

**ds

11/06/2021

FINDING YOUR ROOTS

Is it any wonder that this is the time of year for pausing to pay homage to our ancestors? Before I even knew of this practice, I knew that fall was a time for reflection and introspection- the whole earth is turning inward, recycling life back into the soil -potent, dormant for the deep sleep that is winter. It would be easy to mistake this process for death, but I think of it as recharging, recycling.

So it makes perfect sense that now is the time to gather roots to store as food and medicine. As plants experience the first few frosts, they send their potency, energy, vitality (also in the form of phytochemicals) down into their roots, like a battery being charged for deep storage.

And what a delightful surprise, as I’m digging out these lovely dandelion tap roots (for digestive bitters and roasted dandelion tea), that they come out of the damp darkness perfect and gnarled as wizened body parts - a tribute to my ancestral roots. Gnarly gripping hands, twining legs, bent spines...

The entire process of gathering and processing is a good time to have conversation with these roots. I like to ask questions - the kind of questions I’d like to ask my ancestors: how to make it through the depths of winter, through a pandemic and other world shaking disasters, through political and social unrest, what to do with the pain, how to heal the world, and what is my part in changing the current narrative? You know - just some easy small talk between me and these plants.

The plants and the ancestors have answers to all this and more.

I think I’d be used to it by now, but no - I am still always amazed how support comes through the natural world and our plant allies. So much to learn from simply being with the plants! So grateful I have the calling to pass their wisdom on. And to my forebears who undoubtedly have beckoned me to this work.
🙏🏼

10/07/2021

Gardening IS a revolutionary act. Every time I think about the potential of one small seed to produce hundreds of fruits, flowers, etc, I am awed and humbled by the silent and pervasive power of plants.

The Tree of Liberty

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