Tag Archives: tonics

Oxymels: Honey and Vinegar at Their Best

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What is it about vinegar that we like? The tartness? The pungency? The fact that it is almost alcoholic? I would like to postulate that we like vinegar because our body needs it. Our biology tates it and thinks, “Mmmm … electrolytes, alkalizing, digestive stimulant ….” If your body (or your tastebuds) isn’t a huge vinegar fan, then oxymels are for you. And if you already love vinegar, oxymels will give you an excuse to integrate it into your day.

Before I talk about oxymels, check out the varieties of vinegar in the photo above. This is from the Nashmarkt in Vienna, which is a daily marketplace for edibles, flowers, soaps — and loaded with amazing restaurants. This vinegar shop featured handcrafted, artisan varieties of vinegar. Some sweet and fruity, some spicy, some very dark and strong, like the balsamics in the bottom right. I tried a few, and swear I had a little buzz, not unlike an effervescent kombucha feeling. Even though most medicinal recipes will call for good old apple cider vinegar, why not branch out to other varieties?

Although I have tried oxymels, I figured it was high time to make one for my household. Oxymels are a mixture of vinegar and honey, combining sweet and sour to create an invigorating and balanced blend. The simplest type of oxymels is by stirring a tablespoon of vinegar in a tablespoon of honey, then diluted in a cup of warm water. This simple remedy is known to balance the acid-alkaline balance in the body and is employed as a daily tonic. Here is the oxymel that I made from a recipe I wrote down from a 2006 lecture:

oxymel-herbs

Teresa Broadwine’s Onion Thyme Oxymel (with my own addition of anise)

  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 16 0z apple cider vinegar
  • 2 T thyme
  • 2 T fennel seeds
  • 2 T anise seeds
  • 2 T oregano
  • 2 cups honey

Bring all but the honey to a light boil, then simmer covered for 20 minutes. Let cool slightly, strain and press herbs, and add honey while it is still warm.

When would one take this oxymel? You guessed it: cold and flu season, especially for chest colds of all kinds. I added the anise to assist the herbs in expectoration; it’s one of my favorites for thinning and bringing up congesting phlegm.

There are endless varieties of oxymels, so add in herbs that suit your individual needs. The above recipe could replace onions with garlic for extra anti-microbial action, or an addition of black peppercorns and mustard seeds for more warming actions (as vinegar is cooling, see). James Green says that the basic ratio of vinegar to honey is roughly 1:3, or 1 cup vinegar to 3/4 pounds honey, although I have had some with equal parts honey to vinegar and they seemed to work just fine. Perhaps the larger amount of honey serves for added preservation.

Lobelia oxymel – from Dr. William Cook  for dry, irritable coughs, lung congestion

  • dried lobelia herb
  • apple cider vinegar
  • honey

Place lobelia (preferably dried) in a jar and cover with apple cider vinegar and steep for 2 weeks. Strain, mix with honey in the proportion of ¾ pound honey to 1 cup vinegar. Place in a water bath, until the mixture is like thin molasses, bottle and refrigerate (246). As you can see, there are no set measurements for materials, so adjust quantities to your needs. Dose as needed for coughs.

Jam’s Green’s Poison Oak Lotion

  • 1 part mugwort
  • 1 part horsetail
  • apple cider vinegar
  • salt

Make a strong decoction of 1 part mugwort and 1 part horsetail. To 2 parts of this liquid, add 1 part apple cider vinegar. Add 1 tablespoon salt per cup, bottle, label, and store in the fridge. Apply externally often (184).

For more info on oxymels, visit The Medicine Woman’s Roots, this site, and the Art of Drink, which give a recipe for switchel.

Sources:

Green, James. The Medicine Makers Handbook.

Broadwine, Teresa. Lecture notes, Medicines from the Earth 2006.

{how to make} Kombucha

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kombucha equation

As promised and at long last: the post on making your own kombucha. Hurrah! You can save a lot of money this way, if you’re a kombucha addict. Also, it’s fun.

What you need:

  • 1 gallon of water (distilled is good but if your tap water is tested and safe, use that)
  • a big pot
  • 1 cup of sugar
  • 8 bags of black or green tea. If using loose tea, 4 tablespoons (a quarter cup) will do the trick. Use simple green &or black tea. You don’t need fancy blends and definitely no herbal tea!
  • a big glass bowl: large enough to hold your gallon of tea. Other shapes can be used but a high surface-to-volume ratio is desirable for fermentation. Try to find something at least as wide as it is tall. Always use glass. Kombucha is acidic and toxins from ceramic, plastic and types of crystal will leech into your “healthy” drink.
  • A “mother,” also known as a SCOBY (symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast).

scooby doo

No no, not a Scooby! Although, it does look a little like a monster and you might find your self singing, “Scooby Dooby Doo, where are you?”

Here’s what I’m really talking about:

scoby, mother, whatever you want to call it

It can take awhile to track down a scoby if you want one for free, but it can be done. I paid for my first one. Now I know that anyone who makes kombucha has a new scoby every couple of weeks. I gave them away to friends, family members and strangers who posted scoby-wanted ads on Craigslist. You might also find one through the Kombucha Exchange Worldwide. If only I had known!

The nice part about building a kombucha community is that even when you lapse from making the stuff for awhile, you know someone who can give you a mother when you want it again. It’s kombucha karma, I suppose. You give it away and it comes back to you again.

Now I suppose you want to know what to do with all of this stuff.

What to do:

  • boil your water for 5 minutes
  • add the sugar, stir until dissolved, boil for a few more minutes
  • add tea, turn off heat
  • cover and bring to room temperature (an ice bath can help if you’re impatient)
  • put some fermented kombucha (comes with the scoby) in the glass container, swish around
  • pour the tea into the container (make sure it’s about room or body temp (slightly warm to the touch at the very highest)
  • place scoby on top
  • pour the remaining fermented kombucha on top
  • cover with cheesecloth, paper towel or other breathable fabric
  • let ferment! This will take about two weeks. Taste it!
  • At the end you’ll have a baby culture and some nice kombucha to drink
  • bottle
  • save a culture with a cup or so of kombucha for your next batch
  • start again!

 

Raspberry Leaf – An Herbal Tonic

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raspberry leaf tea blend

 

If you’ve been to a natural food store, you’ve probably seen boxes of raspberry leaf tea sitting on a shelf. You may have looked at that box and read words like “uterine tonic”, or “pregnancy tonic”. Perhaps you’ve even tried the delicately sweet, slightly sour and astringent (but mostly just…green tasting) member of the rose family.

Raspberry leaf is a perfect tonic for during pregnancy. Generally, it is demulcent (soothing to tissues), astringent, tonic to smooth muscles (especially uterus and large intestine). Since it is rich in vitamins and minerals, raspberry is a well-known nutritive herb. It is also helpful as an astringent tonic for excessive urination and diarrhea, and when the uterus and bladder feel heavy or prolapsed. Raspberry’s more thorny cousin, blackberry, is one of the most effective remedies for diarrhea, whatever the cause — in childhood contagious bugs, food poising, traveler’s diarrhea or digestive diseases. It is a good thing to have in your globe trotting first-aid kit — and it’s cheaper and easier on the body than antibiotics.

Raspberry leaf has been used for hundreds of years during and after pregnancy. It can reduce morning sickness in the early months of pregnancy, and can also be helpful in arresting post-partum bleeding. Australian nurse-practitioner Ruth Tricky says that researchers “…suggested that Rubus would prevent or reduce the risk of in-coordinate uterine action (a common cause of difficulty and failure to progress in labor), by regulating the action of the uterine muscles.” (Tricky, 423).

To use raspberry leaf tea during pregnancy, start drinking it after the first trimester. Don’t hesitate — steep strong! One tea bag in one cup of hot water steeped 10 minuets is definitely not going to have the same effect as a medicinally prepared tea. Dried raspberry is quite fluffy, so go for a fourth or third cup of the dried herb steeped, covered, in 3-4 cups hot water for 2-4 hours. Strain and drink daily. Blend with other nutritious tonic herbs like nettle, oatstraw or alfalfa if desired. Midwife Aviva Romm suggests drinking the tea with a slice of fresh orange or lemon, since the vitamin C in the citrus will increase the rate of absorption of the vitamins and minerals in raspberry leaf tea (iron, for one).

Tonic seems like a quaint word of Victorian yesteryear, but it is used often in herbalism. Tonics are called so because they tone or strengthen a body system(s) or the body as a whole over a period of time. To be considered a tonic, an herb usually has a medium to high nutritive profile (like nettle, for instance) and must be safe and mild enough to take everyday indeterminately. Another important feature of tonics is that they seem to have a rich ethnobotanical history of use. Basically, they have been safely used by people for hundreds or thousands of years.

As far I know, every herbal system has tonics, but Chinese medicine has a disproportionate amount of tonics to offer. Ginseng, He-Shou-Wu, Dang Qui, and Astragalus are a few examples. From Roy Upton:

”Chinese herbal medicine has long revered the use of herbal tonics to promote health, longevity, and counter the effects of aging. The highest ideal of Chinese medicine is to promote the highest level of health for the longest period of time, in contrast to simply applying herbs or therapies for the treatment of disease” (124, Medicines from the Earth 2006).

There are many types of tonics; lung tonics, uterine tonics, cardiotonics and so on. Herbs that are used as tonics also have other uses. For example, cordyceps is a yang tonic used to increase warmth, energy and growth when deficient, but is also used for restoring adrenal activity, strengthening the immune system and enhancing athletic output. As you can see, the underlying tonic action is often related to the short term uses of the herb.

There are a few similarities tonics share with each other, but we can’t overgeneralize their actions. Some are astringent (raspberry leaf, a uterine tonic), some are adaptogenic, others are nutritive. Here are a few examples: Schisandra, reishi and shiitake mushrooms, milky oats, licorice, raspberry leaf, alfalfa, astragalus, red clover, licorice, ashwaganda, skullcap, motherwort, linden, hawthorn, gingko.

It may seem that herbal tonics might not be strong acting or elicit marked change in the body because they are food-like, relatively safe in large and continual doses (1-4 cups of tea a day for a year or more) and act generally to promote health. This is definitely not the case. Each of these herbs (even alfalfa or raspberry leaf) have their unique medicinal actions. It is through understanding the action and energetic details (like taste or temperature) of the plant that can help you find the herbal tonic right for you.

Sources:

Romm, Aviva Jill. The Natural Pregnancy Book.

Tricky, Ruth. Women, Hormones and the Menstrual Cycle.