Top Ten Herbs For Teas

Last week saw UK publication of my first book, Infuse: Herbal Teas to Cleanse, Nourish and Heal, co-written with Karen Sullivan, which will come out here in the US on May 3rd. Compiling the more than seventy recipes was a delightful way to spend several weeks last summer. I wanted the teas to taste delicious and bring all kinds of herbal benefits: from relaxing bedtime brews to teas to treat allergies, relieve aching muscles, balance blood sugar and even improve memory.

Taking a few minutes each day to make and enjoy a delicious cup of herb tea is a lovely way to care for yourself, mentally and physically. They’re easy to make, cost very little and you can enjoy many different health benefits with even a small selection of dried herbs.

You may have a selection of herbal teabags in a cupboard, but consider blending your own from dried herbs. Most commercial manufacturers break the herbs down to almost a powder to get them into the tea bag — this causes the herbs to oxidize, impairing their flavor and medicinal benefits. If you’d like to experiment with making herbal tea blends at home, here are my top five dried herbs to create a basic tea apothecary, and a few tips to get the best results.

Chamomile – everyone knows that chamomile relaxes and helps with sleep, but did you know that a strong brew (1 tablesoon dried chamomile flowers to a mug of boiling water) works brilliantly to relieve tension headaches? It also has benefits for digestion and reduces bloating and discomfort after eating, making this a perfect herb to include in a caffeine-free evening tea.

Damiana – I’m always surprised that this Mexican herb is not better known. With a strong, distinctive taste and a gently stimulant action for mind and body, it makes a terrific caffeine-free replacement for coffee in the morning. It also has something of a reputation as an aphrodisiac, so may add a little oomph at bedtime too.

Elderflower – visit parks and wildplaces to harvest your own elderflowers in springtime, and hang smallish bunches enclosed in a loose paper bag upside down in a cool dark place to dry. The tea can be drunk hot or cold to reduce fever and alleviate hayfever symptoms. Or prepare a delicious elderflower cordial by making 250ml of sugar syrup, removing it from the heat and immediately adding a handful of fresh elderflowers. Allow to cool, strain, bottle and store in the fridge for up to a month. Dilute with still or sparkling water, or add a dash to cocktails.

Lemon Balm – easy to grow for fresh herb teas, and easily dried to ensure a year round taste of summer, lemon balm has a fresh lemony taste and makes a delightful tea herb. It has a unique ‘cheering up’ quality to lift your spirits, is calming and soothing for digestion, and has a useful anti-viral action to prevent and treat colds, flu and coldsores.

Liquorice  – you either love the taste or can’t stand it. If like me you adore the aniseedy flavour, a little dried liquorice root (and you don’t need much) is a great addition to herb tea recipes for coughs, viruses, digestive discomfort and all kinds of inflammatory conditions. Its sweetness masks more bitter herbs, making it a great addition to children’s teas. My son adores making liquorice and peppermint which has a yummy, sweet flavor his friends love. Avoid this herb if you have high blood pressure, as it may exacerbate it.

Linden flower – also known as lime flower (and in France, where it’s hugely popular as a tisane, as tilleuil), the trees bearing these curious looking blossoms grow widely in the UK and Europe, where its gorgeous scent sweetens midsummer city streets. Harvest and dry your own for a blast of summer sunshine all year round or buy it ready dried. I don’t need a medical excuse to enjoy this lovely tea, but I particularly reach for it when I want to feel relaxed and calm and when my child has a fever. It has a reputation for lowering cholesterol and maintaining good arterial health.

Meadowsweet – I adore the aroma and taste of this herb, it really does smell like a sweet summer meadow. The leaves contain salicylates, the chemical which gives aspirin its anti-inflammatory action making it a terrific choice of you have arthritis or other inflammatory conditions. It also relieves indigestion making it a perfect after-dinner tea. Believing that most illnesses have inflammation at their base, I drink a tea with meadowsweet most days.

Peppermint – if you have it, fresh mint is easy to grow and makes a delightful tea, but dried is good too. Drink it on its own to relieve indigestion and help reduce a fever or combine it with other herbs to add a minty freshness to your brews.

Sage – another herb which can be plucked fresh from the garden or dried for convenience. Truthfully, sage really doesn’t taste as good the other herbs listed here. But it’s SO useful. On its own or with other herbs and a good spoonful of honey, it works a treat on sore throats. And if you allow it to cool before drinking, it’s the best remedy I know to reduce menopausal hot sweats.

Skullcap – my go-to remedy for stress and anxiety. I love the way skullcap calms the nerves without being sedative, making it perfect for stressful situations such as exams and presentations. It also helps reduce circular thinking, so I often add it to sleep teas when the problem is waking in the night with an overactive mind.

Tea Tips

• Always use fresh, preferably filtered water and bring it just to the boil and allow it to cool for a minute or two before pouring to avoid scalding the herbs.
• Choose organic or wilcrafted herbs if you can. If you have a garden or even a sunny windowsill, consider growing a few herbs for a supply of fragrant fresh leaves.
• Sniff herbs when you are buying avoiding any which smell ‘off’. Look for herbs which are recognizably leaves/flowers or whatever and a good colour. For example, chamomile should have lots of yellow flower centres and tiny white petals.
• Store dried herbs in airtight containers. Coloured or opaque jars or tins can be kept on a cool shelf, but if you’re using clear glass, keep them in a drawer or cupboard as light damages dried herbs.
• See here for a list of resources where you can buy good quality dried herbs. It’s also worth asking at your local herb or health food store.

If you’re feeling inspired to take your herbal tea making to the next level, you can order Infuse: Herbal Teas to Cleanse, Nourish and Heal here (UK) and pre-order here (US)...

HERBAL SKINCARE CLASS

 

I’m excited to share that my HERBAL SKINCARE CLASS will be on Saturday March 21st here on Spring Street from 10:30-2:30. Learn how to make your own gorgeous Organic and Natural Skincare, customized for your skin and as great gifts for family and friends.

The skin is an organ and what you put on it is absorbed into the body. This is why I am passionate that skincare should not only be effective, but so pure you could eat it! The class will be an opportunity to explore how herbs can work on the inside and the outside for your best possible skin. Our day will include:

An introduction to the best herbs to take internally for skin, how to take them and which herbs target specific skin challenges. Learn all about herbs for external use including oils, butters, waxes, aromatic waters and much more.

We'll make:

•  Unique HERBAL SKIN TEA BLEND. •   A beautifully rich LIP BALM with emollient oils, cocoa butter, shea butter, coconut oil, beeswax and essential oils. • Fabulous HAND & BODY LOTION which smells as good as it feels and brings together the smoothing and softening properties of Aloe Vera, Rosewater, Beeswax, Jojoba Oil, Rosehip Oil and Infused Oils and Essential Oils. • Your very own, custom-blended FACE OIL. High end mainstream cosmetics manufacturers recognize the incredible skin benefits of pure and rare oils. With their products costing as much as $90 for a 1oz bottle, learning to  make your own not only saves you a lot of money but, crucially, means you can experiment with different blends to get the one that’s just right for your skin. I’ll introduce you to the oils and help you blend a 1oz bottle to take  home with you on the day.

The class will be kept small and everyone will go home with a pack of Skin Tea, a lip balm, a bottle of Hand & Body Lotion and their own custom-blended skin oil.

Class fee is $90 per person. Contact me at paula@paulagrainger.com for more information or to reserve your place.

Holiday Gift Making Class

Join English Herbalist Paula Grainger for a fun & festive morninglearning how to make your own Beautiful and Natural Holiday Gifts.

Using the finest all-natural ingredients you’ll learn how to create your own handmade cosmetics as gifts and for your own use for years to come.

You’ll take home all the recipes plus a selection of gifts for this Holiday Season including:

4 x Chocolate Peppermint Lip Balm with cocoa butter

3 x Gardener’s Hand Salve with Rosemary & Thyme

2 x Orange Cinnamon Body Lotion with Jojoba oil and Orange Flower Water

SUNDAY NOV. 23RD 10-12.30 Numbers are very limited so email paula@paulagrainger.com to secure your place. $75 per person. Cash or checks payable to Paula Grainger www..paulagrainger.com

Chamazulene alchemy

I just wanted to share this little bit of alchemy. A mom at the school where we do a middle school Herbal Potions elective recently bought the equipment for distilling essential oils. She brought it in for us to experiment with and we did a huge batch of German Chamomile (Chamomilla recutita).

I love showing kids the 'hidden colors' in plants and this is such a great example. The daisy-like white and yellow chamomile flowers conceal minute quantities of lapis lazuli blue chamazulene - a constituent in the essential oil which has wonderful anti-inflammatory and anti-microbial properties.  The amounts are absolutely tiny and I think it fired the kids' imaginations to realize how  a plant which grows all around can contain something so special and rare.

WILD OATS

 

It’s a sunny and breezy afternoon here in Santa Cruz, perfect for a little stroll and a touch of wildcrafting. If you haven’t heard that term before, it’s what we call picking herbs growing the wild. Like most herbalists, I’m pretty cautious when it comes to collecting plants I’m going to use for medicine. I need to be certain that no one is spraying the area (or nearby) with pesticides or herbicides, I need to find a spot which isn’t likely to have been sprayed by passing dogs. I don’t want to pick close to a road and I’m ALWAYS mindful of the plants welfare - never taking more than a tiny percentage of what’s there. There are legal considerations too - if it’s private land, I’ll always ask first and on public property such as parks there are often rules against taking plants.

In an ideal world, I’d grow all my herbs. But today I wanted to collect some Wild Oats and since I’m not in possession of a sunny meadow to grow my own, the only way to collect them was, well, wild. There just happens to be a lovely open space with many meadows just near my house and at this time of year those meadows ripple in the breeze with the elegant chest-high stems of oats. So, what would you do?

Herbalists tend to get a little exercised about the best oat preparation. It’s widely agreed that the best is from the green, unripe seeds and some people like the green straw too. We mostly agree that the final tincture should be milky, and that means harvesting earlier in the season. As you can see from the picture, most were pretty fully ripe and I discovered that all the golden stems had shed their seeds to ensure a repeat performance next year. But in amongst the gold I spotted the almost invisibly fine green stems hanging heavy with their hairy seeds.

After a few minutes my brown paper bag was half full with seeds which I gently stripped from the wiry stems. Once home I popped them in the Vitamix (which is pricey, but a seriously useful piece of kit) with a decent amount of vodka, whizzed them up and poured the green, milky results into a mason jar. I topped it off with enough vodka to fully cover the green stuff and there it is in the cupboard. In two weeks time I’ll have a great Avena sativa tincture to dispense and enjoy.

And how will I use it? Well, Wild Oats is one of those herbs which no one shouts much about, but which is indispensable as part of a calming, nerve-restoring mix. Oats have the reputation of being a nervous system tonic, helping calm frazzled nerves during times of stress and anxiety. There’s a classic combination which teams it with Skullcap and Passionflower, which was so popular with the herbalists I used to work with at Napiers that we had it as a ready made blend - probably the only one we had in the dispensary. The combination is both powerful and gentle. Oats strengthen and restore the nervous system, Skullcap is the best anxiolytic, or anxiety calming, herb I know and Passionflower is a mild and gentle sedative. All three together will help a jumpy, tense and anxious individual find their way back to a state of calm and ease.

So, if there's a meadow near you, why not take a stroll and see what’s growing? Don’t forget to take a bag and make sure you have a decent amount of vodka at home (which is good advice for anyone, herbalist or not).

Horehound

As well as the sealions barking on the wharf, there’s the sound of some very human coughing here in Santa Cruz at the moment. It seems half the population has chest colds or viruses which leave a lingering and highly irritating cough in their wake. So I was pleased to come across a lot of White Horehound (Marrubium vulgare) growing in the splendidly named Pogonip state park, on the edge of the town.

It’s one of my favourite herbs to treat coughs, especially of the rather sticky, stuck-mucusy kind and I also use it in bronchitis and sometimes asthma. I like to think of it as getting down into the lungs and brushing out the mucus, then gently propelling it upwards and out. It doesn’t suppress a cough, as something like Wild Cherry or Coltsfoot would, which is good in this instance, as I want things to move so that the body can recover.

The herb is full of terpines which make it intensely bitter, so I was pleased just now when I strained off the tincture which has been macerating in my kitchen for the last three weeks or so to find that it tastes really horrible. A great sign with horehound. For this reason, I almost never give it as a tea. In my practice I usually combine the tincture with other expectorants like Thyme or Liquorice, immune boosters such as Echinacea and very often my favourite Elderberry for its anti-viral qualities. These have the added benefit of improving the taste somewhat as well as adding their own medicinal actions.

A number of my friends here have been struck by the cough, so today I’m brewing up a batch of Liquorice and Thyme syrup with added elderberries, to which I am also going to add a little of the Horehound tincture. This will give me a nice-tasting syrup with very little alcoholic content, making it suitable for children and people who don’t like alcohol.

Here’s how I’m doing it:

2 Tablespoons dried Liquorice (Glycyrriza glabra)

1 Tablespoon fresh Thyme (Thymus vulgaris)

1 Tablespoon dried Elderberries (Sambucus nigra fructus)

1 pint water

1. In a pan, bring all this up to a slow simmer and let it bubble gently for about 20 minutes or until the kitchen smells good.

2. Strain out the herbs using muslin or kitchen paper in the sieve, as you want to get all the organic material out.

3. Return to the (cleaned out) pan and add 40ml of White Horehound tincture (or you could have added a couple of tablespoons of the fresh herb into the pan at the beginning).

4. Bring it back to the lowest simmer you can and slowly let it reduce to about half.

5. Add sugar or honey (I prefer the latter) in equal volume to the liquid you have left and allow it to cool.

1. Bottle into nice clean bottles or jars and keep it in the fridge. It should be stable in a cool place, but I find it lasts longer in the fridge.

You can take it by the spoonful (1 x 5ml spoonful up to 4 times a day) or add warm water (with or without lemon and/or ginger) to make a hot drink.

This syrup is not suitable for you if you are pregnant or have untreated high blood pressure. If you are taking prescription medication or have a medical complaint, talk to a herbalist or your doctor before self medicating. 

Lemon Entry

It’s citrus season here in Santa Cruz and the Farmers’ markets are awash with lemons, limes, oranges and a huge variety of satsumas, mandarins and clementines (I can never tell which is which). Not to mention grapefruits and pomelos. It’s kind of a spin out for this London herbalist to see locally grown citrus fruit – I still find myself stopping and staring at the loaded trees in people’s gardens. With their rounded shape and blobs of brightly coloured fruit, they look like children’s drawings rather than living, growing plants.

I was lucky enough on Friday to be given a 10lb bag each of lemons and limes. Some of which are in the picture above. One of the things which fascinates me about being here is how it turns my experience of the world around. Everyone knows that lemons are yellow and limes are green, right? Except these aren’t: the lemons are orange and the limes yellow. The latter are called bear limes and are a lot sweeter than the ones I used to buy in England. They have a beautiful fragrance too.

Lemons are kind of overlooked when it comes to herbal medicine, perhaps because they are so widely used in cooking. But, of course, they are a fantastic source of Vitamin C as well as containing good amounts of potassium and vitamin B1. Everyone knows that a hot honey and lemon will help the symptoms of a cold, to the extent that many pharmaceutical remedies are lemon-flavoured. It is also widely seen as a ‘cleansing’ drink when added to hot water – something I drink most days.

This unexpected bounty made me think about what to do with them. A handful of each have been cut into wedges and popped in bags in the freezer to add a citrussy chill to drinks or have boiling water poured over the make my favourite daily drink. But with the rest I’ve started making a childhood favourite, Lemon Curd. When I was growing up, my grandmother always had a jar on the go, which was spread like jam on bread, used to sandwich a sponge cake or, best of all, alternated with her other homemade preserves to create bright yellow spokes on her dinner plate sized jam tart. A circle of pastry, divided into segments with twists of pastry to create a colourful and child-pleasing desert.

Lemon Curd isn’t really a jam as it contains eggs and butter, although it’s not lacking in the obligatory sugar. Like many women of my generation, I’m pretty reluctant to give my son large amounts of sugar, but there’s no getting away from the allure of sweet things to the seven year old boy’s tastebuds. He’s a huge fan of pancakes for breakfast and as I draw the line at the dreaded syrup, he usually has lemon juice and honey on them. But as we found this morning, a pancake rolled around a spreading of fresh lemon curd makes for an extremely delicious breakfast. And it strikes me that this is a comparatively healthy way for him to fulfil his sweet desires. The eggs (and there are a lot of them – two whole eggs and two yolks to 2 lemons in each 1lb jar makes it more egg than lemon, really) provide omega 3 and protein, which as well as being good for him, also slows down the breakdown of the sugar. And a shot of Vitamin C is never a bad thing, especially in winter. Since lemons are very acidic, it’s probably a good idea to have a glass of water afterwards and not brush teeth immediately (fresh acid brushed into the enamel is not a good idea according to the dentists I know).

If you can lay your hands on some lemons, and this recipe only uses two so you don’t need a whole bowlful, then why not make some of this yummy preserve yourself? It’s best kept in the fridge and I’d give it a life of a month or two, though chances are you’ll have finished it up long before then. The recipe below is shamelessly nicked from Nigella Lawson. If you can’t think what to do with the extra egg whites and have a bit of time on your hands, then why not throw health to the wind and use it to make the Lemon Meringue Cake from her book Feast? In my house, even the most hardened healthy eater or desert denier has never refused a second slice!

Lemon Curd Recipe 2 Lemons, zested and squeezed 2 large eggs 2 egg yolks (from large eggs) 150g caster sugar 100g unsalted butter

1. Beat the eggs, egg yolks and sugar together. 2. Melt the butter in a heavy based pan and when melted add the juice and zest of the lemons. 3. Keep it on a gentle heat and stir. You really don’t want to have the heat too high as that will diminish the Vitamin C content of the finished spread. You also don’t want to end up with lemony scrambled eggs! 4. Keep stirring, don’t give up when it seems like it will never thicken. 5. When it eventually does thicken (so that a little smeared onto your finger from the spoon – careful, it’s hot – goes sticky and thick as it cools). Take it off the heat. 5. Pour into a clean and sterilised 1lb (500g) jar. 6. Allow to cool. Lid and label and pop it in the fridge. If you have any seven year olds around the place, allow them some time with the (cooled) pan and spoon. They will really love you!

Tell Them About The Honey...

I was excited to come across this stall at the Farmers' Market last weekend. Medicinal honeys! Bee Humble Apitherapy are collecting honey from their bees and infusing it with herbs, to create some really interesting products.

The proper term for a herbal honey is an Oxymel, and I'm finding myself more and more drawn to them. The Jujubes I immersed in honey have been in the fridge for some weeks now, and the jar is almost empty, after a nasty flu bug went round my son's class and he started finding it drizzled over his porridge, spooned into herb teas to take cold to school and poured onto pancakes.

Honey on its own, of course, has some very interesting anti-microbial properties and has been held in such high esteem that since pre-history, people have risked their lives to collect it. It's human nature to be drawn to sweet things, but there is a big difference between a high quality raw honey and a spoonful of sugar. The sugars in honey are highly complex and it also contains anti-oxidants.

The honeys at the market were infused with a variety of herbs. I was particularly taken with the Elderberry one, which is an excellent idea: combining the anti-viral properties of the berry with the anti-bacterial honey has to make for a very useful winter spread. Likewise  Sage makes a lot of sense - my quick remedy for a sore throat is sage (of whatever type is growing nearby) tea with a good dollop of honey. I also really liked their Ginger and Siberian Ginseng honey, which I think would make a great pick-me-up for anyone who has been unwell or under stress. I was intrigued by the Yerba Santa version - it's a new herb for me. The Spanish name means 'Holy Herb' and it was prized by the native peoples and settlers as an expectorant - it's a local herb here and one I want to get to know.

Local honeys are very helpful in preventing and treating Hay fever and seasonal allergies. The idea being that the bee-processed flower pollens 'inoculate' against inhaled pollens, many people find it very effective, especially if taken ahead of the allergy season. I often recommend it alongside herbal tinctures of Elderflower and/or Plantain and Nettle. It would be interesting to infuse a honey with some or all of those herbs to create a kind of all-in-one hayfever prevention remedy. I shall try it next summer.

If you want to make a herbal honey yourself, simply chop up the herb, preferably fresh, though dried will work too, as finely as you can and pour enough honey over to cover the herb. Then let it infuse for a few weeks. Garlic makes a pungent version which will see off any winter bugs (not to mention vampires and most of your friends and family).  If you use a fresh herb, it's best to keep it in the fridge (as I did with the jujubes) as water in the herb can dilute the honey reducing it's 'supersaturatedness' and therefore making it more likely to go off.

As a professional herbalist, I will always prefer tinctures for their efficacy, ease of blending and convenience of use. But for the home herbalist, and particularly for mums and dads, I think honeys should definitely have a place in your herb cupboard. Children love them, they have no alcohol and they're a really effective way of using nature's medicine chest to keep you and those you love healthy.

If you'd like to take a look at Bee Humble's website, it's at http://www.beehumbleapiaries.com.

'Herbalist Luv Em'

Actually, herbalist quite like them. Herbalist's husband, on the other hand,  'luv em'.

Yes, it's another find at the Farmers' Market! I keep seeing so many thing there which demonstrate how right Hippocrates was when he wrote 'Let food be your medicine and medicine your food'.  This was in the downtown Santa Cruz market last week and the sign obviously caught my eye, as did the hard, shiny little fruits which looked like miniature Red Delicious apples. To eat, they have the crunch of an apple and the dry, fibrous sweetness of a fresh date. I thought they were quite pleasant, but my husband found them strangely addictive and finished off most of the bowl in a couple of days.

I had never come across 'jujubees' before, so I looked them up when I got home. I discovered that they are usually called Jujubes and that the Latin name is Ziziphus jujuba - which I have heard of. It's not a herb we use in Western Herbal Medicine, but it's familiar to my colleagues working with Chinese herbs. A little more research revealed that the fruits are used medicinally throughout Asia and the Middle East. They are usually dried and, as with most Chinese herbs, prepared as a tea or decoction. The main medicinal use seems to be as an immune tonic, with nourishing qualities and, possibly anti-microbial and anti-fungal actions. They are also mucilagenous, so soothing to the throat.

The jujubes are a timely discovery, as the cold and flu season seems to be starting in Santa Cruz and I haven't come across any elderberries yet (though I'm told they grow up in the mountains).  I plan to look out for more, dry them a bit - which I think they will do pretty much by themselves if I leave them on the kitchen windowsill - and try chopping them and  preserving them in honey. Our local Wholefoods has beautiful untreated local honeys which are kept at beehive temperature in huge serve-yourself tanks. I reckon a spoonful of jujube honey in a tea, with sage for a sore throat or boneset for a fever, could make a good remedy to ward of  the viruses my family encounters. I'll let you know how it goes!

Borage for Courage

Something I've been delighted to discover in Santa Cruz is an abundance of Borage - it's in my front yard and all over the beautiful herb and vegetable garden at my son's new school, which is where  I took the photo above. The Borage has bright, star-shaped blue flowers. It's threaded through here with a fabulous orange-flowered climber which is completely new to me, but I'm told is a kind of Hawaiian Passionflower.  I've yet to find out the latin name or whether it has any of the medicinal qualities of the Passiflora incarnata I use. Do let me know if you can enlighten me.

You don't often see Borage growing wild in London, though its rampaging look-alike alkanet splashes many city gardens with blue. Both are members of the boraginaceae family, whose other members include comfrey, lungwort and forget-me-nots. All share characteristic furry, slightly bristly leaves and most have blue flowers.

The saying 'Borage for Courage' comes from a belief that Roman soldiers took the herb before heading into battle. I don't know whether that's true, but it's informed my prescribing on a number of occasions, I really do feel this herb can help people when they are unsure whether they can face the task ahead. I feel there are many aspects to Herbal Medicine. We are taught the science and pharmacology at college and it's crucial to understand those, of course. But as I have said before, I think there is a lot more to the relationship between the plant and animal kingdoms: ways in which the spirit of the plant can interact with our own unconscious.

I would certainly say Borage is an adaptogen, or herb which supports the adrenal glands. And robust adrenals help us face things with courage and fortitude, since they are responsible for  the stress hormones adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol and can become depleted over extended periods of  stress. The best known adaptogens are exotic and expensive herbs like ginseng, I love that there is a very good one which grows perfectly well in gardens, here in California and in England too.

Since I couldn't bring my dispensary with me, I am creating one for myself here, using the herbs I can beg and borrow from kind Santa Cruzians. And thanks to the generosity of Caprice, the doyenne of the school garden, I'm delighted to say that the very borage plant in this photo, as well as a few of its brothers and sisters, are hanging up right here in my house ready to be tinctured tomorrow! A good borage tincture often has a dark blueish tint from the flowers, I'll let you know how it turns out!