Herb of the Day: Marvelous Mint(s)

With over 600 varieties, the Mint family is one of our most pleasant and useful groups of herbs. Mints are easily identified by their pungent scents, due to their volatile essential plant oils. Fairly safe to use, extremely versatile in making culinary dishes, desserts, teas, candies and alcoholic drinks, mints are a great group of herbs to begin your journey of herbal experimentation with. Mints also have a long track-record of benefiting your health, from easing digestion, headaches and chest problems, to bestowing long life. Thanks to its oils, fresh mint is, of course, by far the best choice. Mints are diaphoretic (induce sweating), stimulating and cooling, perfect in salads or drinks on a hot day, or after dinner to help soothe your stomach, particularly in children.

One of the best ways to choose which type of mint to use in making food or herbal teas is to smell it, since mints can look very similar. Not only this, but mints readily hybridize with each other, forming a completely new plant! You can see this in Mint species names, such as Mentha x, indicating a hybrid. Another key way to identify mints is a square stem (roll it gently between your fingers to feel the flat sides!), which is found in other related species of herbs in the Labiatae family not usually thought of as "mint," such as Motherwort.

To make a simple cold infusion to enjoy the following day:

Slice 1-2 cups of watermelon into chunks, per each gallon of water you wish to infuse with flavor. Place water in a large jar, bowl, or specially designed infuser, then add watermelon. Rinse and add a generous handful of mint. Place your mixture in the refrigerator for a minimum of three hours, or preferably overnight. Your water will not only be nicely chilled, but full of a delicious, cooling, melon-mint flavor. An infuser cuts out the need to strain the mix; you can also serve your water in a straining pitcher. Add some ice cubes to keep the water cool.

Above: Bowles' Mint, or Apple Mint. The broad, bright green, softly furry leaves have a delicious, applelike scent. Like many mints, Apple Mint spreads rapidly in a yard or garden via root runners if left to its own devices.

Hot Times Ahead

The past couple of days, we've had a lovely, refreshing break as far as weather is concerned — mild temperatures of sixty or so, and a gentle gray sky with occasional drizzles (and even a downpour or two!) of rain. I felt overjoyed to see it, personally, what with our unusually hot late spring and summer this year. The day or two following a decent rain is a great time to clear weeds from newly-softened soil, especially in our region where much of our dirt is clay, and by this time of year can become very hard-packed and stubborn. Clearing out weedy crud also allows herbs more room for fresh growth in response to a good rain.
This coming week and the next in the PacNW, we're expecting several 90-degree days, followed by a week of 80-degree days. In my mind, this simply translates as "hot", and thus a poor time to be out shoveling soil... unless there's ice cream and lemonade waiting! It's a good time, however, for herbal recipes meant to cool you off and hydrate you, while boosting critical aspects of your health. Hence my new booklet, Wild Brews to Refresh, a project I think I'd better finish soon... both for my own sake as well as everyone else's, in light of our forecast!

Above: The current cover for Refresh. Designing a cover is a lot of fun, with the biggest challenge being the sheer number of design choices! A pet design may need to be scrapped in favor of a more legible, or applicable, design. It's nice that Amazon Kindle allows for changing covers — or even just iterations of what's basically the same cover. The original cover for Refresh, with its old title, is below. I liked the old cover; but the new cover, and title, are easier to read on Amazon's homepage, in a thumbnail image that really is no bigger than the end of my thumb.

Wild Herb of the Day: Borage

Borago officinalis, also called Common Bugloss, Starflower

"I, Borage, bring always courage."
This rhyme, familiar for centuries, points to Borage's use as a tonic and soothing herb to strengthen the heart and lift the spirits. Borage leaves and flowers were a popular remedy for depression in the medieval era, when knights drank a Borage infusion before entering a jousting tournament. Known since Roman times, possibly earlier, Borage was grown in gardens throughout Europe, then brought by settlers to North America, where it now flourishes as a self-seeding weed. Depending on the soil Borage grows in, its charming flowers will be a range of royal blue to magenta pink, with amazing hues of purple in between.

The leaves and flowers of this plant are anti-inflammatory: They contain mucilage, or a slippery, soothing agent, useful in brews for coughs, sore throat, fevers, and inflammations of the skin, kidneys, and bladder. You wouldn't know it by handling Borage with your bare hands, since its stems and leaves are covered with prickly hairs! Wear gloves, then use the leaves in making a pleasant, cucumber-tasting tea, or a refreshing medicinal wine. The leaves can also be eaten raw in salad once you get those prickles off (it's okay, they don't sting, like nettles do), or cooked as a green vegetable. The flowers, beautiful as they are, can be used to garnish food or drink, or even candied and used in desserts, as you would candy rose petals — I've found making candied flowers takes a little time, but the results are lovely, and tasty!

Some studies suggest that consuming large amounts of Borage is unsafe, and can lead to health problems. This is the sort of thing the FDA is apt to suggest, in the interest of public safety and their own credibility. I would concur, saying it's not wise to eat vast quantities of any herb, even a relatively mild one. However, Borage has been eaten for centuries with seemingly very little, if any, ill effects.

You'll likely find some Borage still flourishing at this time of year; I've found some this week, even after our local spell of unusually hot weather, resulting in plants going to seed two months early! Borage has a common cousin, Viper's Bugloss, another prickly, mucilaginous weed with cute little rounded blue flowers instead of star-shaped ones. This plant is widespread here in Western Oregon and was in full bloom earlier this year, but has mostly gone to seed and dried out. If you have a garden, Borage is a favourite treat of honey-bees, who make delicious honey from it. Watch both Borage and Viper's Bugloss carefully, if you do invite them in — they live up to their courageous reputation, and love to take over a yard, prickles, cute blue flowers and all!

 Above: Another member of the Bugloss family, cousin to Borage.

Improving an eBook for Ease of Use

I'm so excited to be on the brink of another book launch! As you can imagine, Wild Brews for Dreamy Sleep tackles insomnia, restlessness, nightmares, and similar problems from several natural and holistic angles. Like its fellow editions, Dreamy Sleep is a kind of cross-training in basic home herbal craft. You'll learn recipes for teas (from easy to super-herb-intensive), alcoholic nightcaps, tinctures, smoothies, and scented oil blends to help you cop some Zs. Of course, one person's cause of sleepless nights may not be trouble at all for someone else. If one solution or method isn't your bag of tea, chances are you'll find another remedy more suited to your needs — one you can easily make at home.

Now that I'm working on my herbal eBook series at least half-time, I'm making improvements more quickly and applying them to all books in the series. There's lots to learn in online publishing! Each book has challenged me to replicate what I've already learned, while improving on it. For a reference, how-to or recipe book like these, unlike in fiction, user-friendliness is especially important. People like convenience in our fast-paced world. Additionally, the Wild Brews series is about making positive changes for a healthier you — and if you're going to help somebody change a bad habit or three, well, you'd better make it as easy as possible.

Wild Brews for Dreamy Sleep is the fifth booklet I've written so far, destined to be uploaded in the next few days. It's the first to incorporate a hyperlinked Table of Contents, which allows you to jump around to different sections of the book, as well as links back to the Table of Contents at the end of each chapter. One of the benefits of eBooks is that you can jump quickly between different sections of the book, via hyperlinks. Sounds simple, but when you're just learning to format your online book, it's a big step! I chose to teach myself how to format my own books, rather than pay somebody to do it (via Fiverr, for instance). My reasons, besides being on a rock-bottom budget, are pride, a love of learning, and also self-sufficiency: What if I needed to finish a book in a pinch, and didn't want to be let down by the person I hired? Fortunately, there are tutorials for Smashwords and other online eBook platforms, which teach you how to format an online book. Now that I've figured out this helpful perk, I'll place hyperlinks in all previous Wild Brews eBooks. The ingredients may be wild, but I'm here to make herbalism tame enough, and fun enough, for every household!

The New Wild Brews Blog!

Wild Brews has a new blog! This is very exciting, and I hope to reach more of you about the joys of home herb-craft, brewing, and wild plant know-how through this new site. There are plenty of herbalists out there already, but in my opinion, there can never be enough caring people in the areas of herbal knowledge, natural health and education. Time to take to the forests, the fields, and the kitchen laboratory!

Wild Brews is a book series (currently online only) that focuses on herbal knowledge and making herbal remedies, from teas and tinctures to ciders, smoothies and medicinal wines with an herbal component. Learn to heal what ails you naturally, while having fun in the process!

Above: Portland's Oaks Bottom is a beautiful nature preserve; but on any given walk, I can spot at least a dozen medicinal plants, were I in an area where collecting is acceptable.