Making the Most of Thyme

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Thyme might not be one of the more popular essential oils, but it is a potent one to have and to use. Just as the herb is highly medicinal with recipes as old as Hippocrates’ using thyme for the respiratory system (see that recipe here if you missed it), the essential oil is an all around anti-germ powerhouse. In Valerie Ann Wormwood’s book, The Complete Book of Essential Oils and Aromatherapy, she includes thyme essential oil in her travel kit in order to use it to wipe down the sinks and counters and such of the places where she stays. It is indeed a great one to include in cleaning concoctions because it is antiviral, antibiotic, anti-fungal, and anti-parasitic.

Thyme is great to inhale for its immune boosting and invader fighting properties. It is especially good for difficult viruses and superbugs such as the flu and MRSA. Diffusing the essential in the air is a great way to experience the healing benefits of thyme. In my ceramic diffuser which holds water on top, I add three to six drops of thyme and let the candle burn for no more that half an hour. In my water-less wood and glass diffuser, I add 15-20 drops of essential oils at a time.

Even better than just inhalation though, is to make a body oil with thyme and add that to your feet, or anywhere else on your body, so it soaks directly into your bloodstream.

Making a body oil is incredibly easy and really any vegetable oil will work, so if all you have available is olive oil, that’s completely fine, but jojoba and fractionated coconut oil are particularly good for soaking right into the skin quickly so you aren’t left with oily palms to deal with. You want about five drops of thyme essential oil per teaspoon of base oil. You can reuse a small glass bottle with the mixture and add it to your body three times per day, or add about a teaspoon of the mix to a hot bath. Thyme essential oil can also just be used in a bath straight, up to five drops in the tub, but do not use the essential oil directly on the skin (neat) without a carrier. Thyme can even be used in a shower by flinging a couple of drops onto the back wall of the shower stall, where no direct stream of water hits, and the steam will work with the essential oil quite beneficially.

Thyme essential oil is herb-y smelling and distinct, so it might not be one that a lot of people are drawn to right away when picking out essential oils, but it really is worth having around for it’s immune boosting and germ fighting properties. Perhaps that is why thyme has traditionally been associated with warriors and courage~ it is certainly an avid defender against invaders of all sorts. In fact, it is even a good one to add to blends for keeping away mosquitos and other bugs as well. Life circumstances have thrown me a bit lately and along with the jolt came a rather severe cold, so I’ve been very glad to have thyme around for both the fortitude and the immune boosting. My sister has been an even more important healer and helper at this time so I’ve been well taken care of during this rough patch.

Take care of yourselves, and of each other, and when you need a little extra green help, don’t forget thyme is on your side.

 

 

 

New Foods and Supps for Health

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The New Hope Blogger Box always has great gluten free goodies in it, and this month’s was no exception. I love granola and was thrilled to find Jessica’s Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Granola in the box because if there is anything better than granola, it’s granola with chocolate chips. This is a delicious treat for breakfast or an afternoon snack, with just right amount of sweetness. I ate it with unsweetened vanilla coconut yogurt or milk with a half teaspoon of my anti-inflammatory digestive spice mix.

My oldest son was thrilled with these unique Tahini Bars from the company Mighty Sesame. These are gluten free and only 100 calories a bar, and make for a nutty tasting, not-too-sweet snack or even a dessert. These bars come in different flavors but we tried the Pistachio Halva Bar and it was a hit, especially with my son who has taken all but one in his lunch bag. (I managed to grab that one for myself!)

Swanson Health’s Vanilla Protein Powder is packed with 20 grams of vegan sourced protein and one serving of veggies. I used this in the smoothies I make every morning and it blended in nicely and tastes good. It has 120 calories per serving which is similar to the other vegan protein I regularly use, and zero sugars. One bag has 20 servings in it.

My oldest son agreed to be the guinea pig for a natural deodorant by Prep U Products. He is almost 15, bikes uphill 1.75 miles to school everyday, and has PE there every day as well. He then bikes home. He also has sensitive skin and we have been through at least five (or more) brands of natural deodorants to find one that works and doesn’t irritate his skin. This deodorant works for him. It is gentle enough not to irritate, and yet it actually works throughout the day despite his physical activities off and on all day long. This is a golden find.

Here’s a supplement to get you fully transitioned out of cold and flu season safely and healthfully. Nature’s Answer has combined elderberry extract with probiotics which specifically target the immune system to create a powerful immune support supplement. This has 32,000 mg elderberry (which is an herb traditionally used to boost the immune system) per serving as well as 10 billion cfu probiotics. This is a great supplement to have on hand through cold and flu system and it doesn’t even need to be refrigerated. The directions are to take two per day with food or water.

The supplement’s color is so pretty!

Two bars that deserve mentioning are Hemp Health’s Cookie Dough Hemp Bar and gt brands’ good Snacks! Chocolate Peanut Butter protein bar. The hemp bar uses hemp for the main protein source and is quite tasty with a surprisingly good nutrition profile, including a decent amount of iron. It also has 12 grams of protein per bar, 5 grams of fiber and 4 grams of sugar. They have several flavors and other hemp products as well. The good snacks’ chocolate and peanut butter bar is delicious with a nod towards Reese’s peanut butter cups, though not as sweet. These have 15 grams of protein, 11 grams of fiber, and 9 grams of sugar. Both of the bars are gluten free, soy free, and vegan.

I’ve posted about Bellucci’s Olive Oil before, but in case you missed it, these olive oil packets are perfect for lunch bags, camping, or picnics. Now that spring is finally officially here (in the Northern hemisphere anyway) nothing sounds better than some outdoors noshing. With Bellucci you can actually trace your olive oil from the batch number to its roots so you know you have an authentic product, which is important because there is a surprising amount of oil out there masquerading as EVOO.

Thank you for reading and I hope you see something new to try. Happy Equinox!

Supplements and Beverage Featuring CBD

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CBD continues to take the natural products industry into new and uncharted territories, mostly because the legal status of CBD is still seen as somewhat precarious. If you are confused on CBD, you are in very good company. Despite the confusion, CBD’s fan base is growing substantially at an extremely fast rate as the benefits of CBD become more known, which are many, including help with anxiety, focus, acne, aches, serious pain, and more. As a reminder, CBD comes from hemp but does not have psychoactive components (like THC), so though your mood may change from getting anxiety relief from CBD, don’t expect a euphoric high (nor the munchies!) Here’re what came in the latest New Hope Blogger Box of samples.

Most CBD supplements so far have been oils which you take through a dropper or capsules. Plus +CBD Oil has come out with gummies that have 5 mg CBD per serving. They are tasty, not overly sweet, and the dosage is just one per day. They have several different lines of CBD products with different potencies, and many ways to take them such as balms, sprays, and capsules, so they are a nice place to start if you are brand new to CBD and want to give it a try. What I personally notice most when taking any CBD product, including these gummies, is a reduction in feelings of stress and anxiety. I notice it most when driving, as there are certain instances that normally cause those feelings of stress and anxiety to pop up (traffic, getting turned around, running late, turns with heights that seem roller coaster-ish). When I take CBD I feel calmer and more able to make sound decisions while behind the wheel, even when in a situation that would normally throw me off my game a bit. I know others really get relief from aches and pains with CBD~ more on that next.

Myriad Wellness makes quite a few CBD products including ones for pets. (It’s my understanding that CBD can help pets with anxiety, aches, and pains just as with humans. People recommend it for many reasons, from nurturing rescue dogs to easing cancer pain.) They sent their muscle and tension stick in the New Hope Blogger Box which has 125 mg of CBD in it. Normally I don’t have a lot of muscle pain, but sometimes at night my legs will be a tad sore from over exertion or just a new exercise that day. The other night I was feeling that bit of soreness so I lathered on this CBD infused stick because the directions say to “apply liberally.’ I might have gone a bit overboard because this stick not only has CBD, it has menthol and camphor in it so the tension relieving action is a very active feeling, not a subtle ‘Hm, I-think-it-might-be-doing-something action’ at all. Once I put this on, I knew it was definitely working right away. It might have been overkill for the slight soreness I felt, but I know for sure I can recommend this product to the athletes I know. And by the way, I tried the regular strength which was plenty strong, but there is also an extra strength if you tend to get hard-core sore. 

Just as adaptogenic herbs are big in the functional food department, CBD can be now be found in drinks. Acme Naturals sent three of their Tree Below Zero sparkling juice beverages which have 25mg of hemp oil extract in them. So far I have tried the mandarin blood orange and it tastes kind of like a mimosa since it has an effervescent orange flavor. It is really good and apparently is even an award winner for both best tasting Hemp/CBD beverage and one of the 2018 Top 5 most innovative beverages. They also pride themselves on being FDA compliant and Health Canada certified, made with sustainability, no preservatives and no artificial ingredients. It’s a nice way to incorporate CBD into your life without adding more supplements.

There are more supplements and foods that I will share next week from the New Hope Blogger Box, but since these are all CBD infused products I wanted to give them space to themselves because CBD is both insanely popular and also still confusing to a lot of people. If you are having trouble finding CBD products in stores, look on Amazon or go directly to the website of the product in which you are interested. Most of the CBD websites are also shops.

Thank you for reading and please comment below what your experiences have been with CBD products. I’d love to hear!

 

Sourdough Baking with Einkorn Part 2

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I wanted to follow up on sourdough baking because it can sound daunting and time-consuming when first looking into the process. It took me many months of mulling it over before finally deciding it was worth trying if my gluten-sensitive son and I could eat really delicious bread and digest it without problems. It has turned out to be more than worth it and I have been baking about three or so loaves a week without it taking too much time, so I thought I’d share what exactly that looks. As a reminder, if you are gluten sensitive like my son and I, einkorn might work for you too, but if you are celiac it is not an option because it does contain a form of gluten.

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After an overnight rise.

Mostly I do an overnight rise, which saves a bunch of time. When I don’t do an overnight rise and start in the morning instead, the timing is still hard for me to get quite right because I’m new to it, but that’s OK because even then it’s a forgiving process. For example, one day when I wanted to make a sourdough focaccia for dinner and I started the process in the morning instead of overnight, by the time I was ready to actually start baking it was too late for me to manage getting the loaf shaped, herb-y, and into the oven in time for dinner. It was not a big deal though, I just put the dough into the fridge and made the focaccia the next day, which turned out great by the way without any eggs, sugar, or dairy. That is another great thing about baking our own bread~ the ingredients are simple and pure with most loaves being just flour, water, and salt, (plus the starter which is also just flour and water.) With the focaccia there was also some oil, the herbs, and a tablespoon of white wine, but in the hard crusted sourdough loaves I mostly have been baking, the ingredients are really just flour, salt, and water.

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Floured counter top

With an overnight rise, the timing looks like this: You put the starter and water together and mix until creamy, then add the einkorn flour and salt and mix until the water is absorbed. You will need to let it sit for 10-15 hours on a counter top and rise to about twice its size. I put plastic wrap over the top and also a towel, just to keep it dark. This probably takes all of 10 minutes at most, and I do it any time in the evening that happens to work. In the morning the dough is nice and big and looks alive, so whenever I have the time to be home for about an hour and a half or so, I start to work with it. I flour my counter top and scrape the dough out of the bowl with a spatula. I flour the top of the ball of dough and pat it down, bring the sides in, turn it over and rotate it a few times to seal the bottom. Then I put the dough into a colander with a linen couche that has been floured and I can cover the dough on top as well. This takes about 10 minutes or less. I then preheat the over to 500 and put my Dutch oven in there to preheat as well for 30 minutes. After the loaf sits for at least thirty minutes and the oven has preheated as long, the dough goes into the Dutch oven which goes into the oven, and then the heat gets turned down to 450. The bread bakes for 40 minutes, cools for an hour or two after that, then it’s all ready to be enjoyed.

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Baked and ready to take out of the Dutch oven.

As you can see, the actual time spent working with the loaf is pretty minimal. It has to sit once for a long time (10-15 hours) and then sit again for a short 30 minutes, then bake for 40 minutes. Not bad for fresh, delicious, hard-crusted bread that we can digest without any problems. I should add that about once a week I also refresh the starter which takes about 5 minutes.

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The above is just to give you an idea of what the timing looks like to bake your own sourdough bread a few times a week at home. For actual instructions, you should check out Carla Bartolucci’s YouTube tutorial on it. That’s how I learned, along with her book, Einkorn. Both her videos and book are very easy to follow and they are all you need to get started with einkorn sourdough baking.

If you are on the fence about trying it yourself, I encourage you to go for it. Contact me with any questions and I’ll try to help or at least point you in the right direction. Or if you already bake with sourdough starter, let me know your tips and tricks and how old your starter is.

Next week I’ll be posting about some samples I received and there will be quite a few CBD products, so stay tuned! Wishing you health and happiness to you and yours.

 

Herbs for Constipation

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Ayurveda doesn’t shy way from talking about bodily functions. In fact, ask any Ayurvedic practitioner about elimination and chances are they will have a rather strong opinion and be able to give you a lengthy description on what it should like, how often it should be happening, and when it should be happening in relation to your meals. I’m not an Ayurvedic practitioner myself but one of my herbal teachers and mentors, Karta Purkh Singh Khalsa, was steeped in Ayurvedic herbalism so I do remember long class discussions on the subject. As for the looks, think of an overripe banana~ brown, in-tact,  and buoyant. With timing, food should take about 18-24 hours to travel from one end of your digestive system (mouth) to the other. If the timing is shorter than that, you may not be getting all the nutrients out of your food. If it’s longer than that, you could be experiencing chronic toxic build-up. If you don’t know how long the process takes for you, eat something that you will recognize when it pops back out such as beets, which like to make quite the dramatic exit if you aren’t expecting the bright red color. (You’ve been forewarned.) Elimination should happen for every meal, so around three times a day is ideal.

One way to get things moving first thing in the morning is to drink a cup of lukewarm water with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. This can also be done at other times of the day, on an empty stomach, but first thing in the morning works best. It’s a nice morning ritual for general cleansing as well.

For occasional issues with constipation, there are two common herbs used traditionally as stimulant laxatives: senna and cascara sagrada. Both should only be used occasionally, because as with any stimulant laxative, herbal or otherwise, they lose effectiveness over time as they train the intestines to rely on the outside stimulation. They do normally produce results within hours of ingesting, (pills, teas, or tinctures), but keep in mind, they are not fixing the root of the problem. Herbalism works best when focused on balancing out health issues at their root, so although these herbs can get you through a rough patch, it’s important to dig deeper into the problem and make adjustments there, so look into the foods you are eating, the amount of water you are drinking, the amount of exercise you might be getting, etc.

There is an herbal combination called triphala that can be taken long-term to enhance intestinal health and kick constipation to the curb (as long as the root of the issue is also properly addressed.) Triphala is a combination of three herbs: Amla, Haritaki, and Bibhitaki. These three herbs each have special benefits for the three doshas, Pitta, Vata, and Kapha, therefore when they are all together they are considered tri-doshic, meaning good for all three doshas. (You can take a dosha quiz here to find your personal doshic profile.) This tri-doshic quality is one of the reasons it is one of the most well-known and popularly used Ayurvedic formulations of all time. In fact, it has been around for over 2,000 years and still going strong. This combination might take longer to work than the herbs above, but within 24 hours elimination should occur and you don’t need to worry about taking it for an extended amount of time. Although it’s a relatively safe formula for most people, Banyan Botanicals lists these cautions: “Contraindications can include diarrhea, dysentery, and if you are pregnant or nursing. There are no known drug interactions with the herbs that make up triphala.1, 6 Some studies do report findings that would advise caution in people taking blood-thinning medicines,7, 8 as triphala may affect platelet function. From an Ayurvedic perspective, if your stools are dry and hard, consider using haritaki in place of triphala.” (Banyan Botanicals)

When I worked at health food stores, the box of tea that was far and away the top seller was Smooth Move by Traditional Medicinals, which, as you might have guessed, is for constipation. It has senna plus other herbs that support the digestive system, and is only supposed to be for occasional use only. They have a couple of different flavors for the teas and also capsules.

As with many health issues, making sure you are drinking plenty of water, eating plenty of fruits and vegetables, and actively moving your body everyday will get you far on your path towards optimal health. Herbs offer another level of support in those health, body, and life goals.

Wishing you health, happiness, and at least one herbal ally in your life.

 

 

 

How to Make an Herbal Syrup

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Herbal syrups are a kid-friendly and throat-friendly way to take healing herbs. They don’t have to be doled out in medicinal spoonfuls either, you can add them to tea, pancakes, or cocktails just like any other syrup. Elderberry syrup is a classic immune booster for wintertime cough and cold season, but other herbs such as licorice, thyme, and sage make excellent upper respiratory syrups as well. Even Hippocrates himself had a recipe for bronchitis that included thyme: For Bronchitis, 2 cups water with 3 T thyme, steep 10 minutes then drink twice/day~ Hippocrates.

I made licorice syrup with cinnamon in this tutorial. Licorice has many uses, from respiratory to digestive to adaptogenic properties. It is also anti-viral, making it a great cold and flu fighter. Some people are a little frightened of licorice because when taken in excessively large doses, it can raise blood pressure. Licorice is one of the top ten herbs used in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) though, and it is included in many TCM herbal blends for a variety of issues, (though usually in smallish amounts.) If it has worked for thousands of years for a multitude of different issues for so many, I think most people are safe to take licorice for their throat, stomach, and cough complaints. That is of course up to you and your personal health advisers. Other herbs can be used instead of licorice, with the same instructions, and you can of course use sugar as the sweetener if you want. Honey and agave nectar have soothing, coating properties to aid healing, and in agave’s case, less of a glycemic impact.

Herbal Syrup:

›Materials: Dried herbal material such as licorice, elderberries, or thyme, water, honey or agave nectar, a pot, a clean glass jar.

›Combine the herbs and water in a pot in a ratio of 1:2. (Example, 1 cup herbs to 2 cups water)

›Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, 30-40 minutes until reduced by approximately half.

›Strain the herbal material, put the liquid back in the pot and add the same amount of sweetener, over low heat, for another 10 or so minutes. In other words, if you have 3/4 cup of liquid left after cooking and straining, then you add 3/4 cup of sweetener.

›Let it cool, then bottle and refrigerate for longest storage.

This video shows you how easy it is (please ignore my messy house and hair. This was done within some time constraints and really needs to be updated. Soon…..) :

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I hope you and your loved ones are making it through the winter season without any illnesses. The snowcopalypse that shut down the Seattle area is finally easing a bit and I have even spotted some robins already, so spring must be on its way. Take care and please share with anyone looking for an herbal boost.

Sites Merging

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Hello and thank you for following one of my blogs. You may have noticed I’ve been using Spice of Life Blog only for the purposes of linking to my newer site, Botanical Alchemy & Apothecary. From now on, only BA&A will appear in your WordPress reader, or if you subscribed via email, in your inbox. You don’t have to do anything to still have access to all the content, I just wanted to give everyone a heads’ up that the blog Spice of Life will now be completely merged with Botanical Alchemy & Apothecary.

Thank you again and Happy Valentine’s Day!

Valentine’s Day Herbal Gifts

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Homemade gifts made with heart and intention are perfect for the holiday that celebrates love. Valentine’s Day is a warm reminder during this cold season that love should be celebrated fully and joyfully in all its forms, from friendship to family, and of course that special someone. Everyone can appreciate an herbal gift that conveys not only love, but also health, beauty, and green thoughtfulness.

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What plant could be more associated with Valentine’s than the rose? A flower of beauty that signifies love, it also has healing attributes that qualify it as an herb. Drinking rose petal tea is relaxing, due to its mildly sedative properties, and it also has some historical use as a headache reliever. The petals are used extensively for skin health, anti-aging, and beautification, while rose hips are full of bio-available vitamin C. Rose oil makes a lovely base for a massage or bath oil, and bath salts with rose petals would make a relaxing gift that encourages self-care and rejuvenation. Baths full of rose petals are picturesque and you will see plenty on Instagram, but if you don’t want to clean up wet petals after a restful bath, I suggest packing them in a muslin bag. You get all the benefits without worrying about the messy clean-up afterwards. The proportion of salts to rose petals is completely up to you, but if you want to add essential oils to the mixture, keep the essential oils down to about 10-20 drops per cup of mixture. Example: 1 cup Dead Sea Salt, 1/2 cup rose petals, 15 drops of lavender oil, and 10 drops of rose absolute in jojoba. Mix all together in a bowl before adding to a jar with a tight cap for gifting. Don’t forget to add the reusable muslin bag inside the jar, or tie it on the outside. 

Making a rose petal mask is another lovely way to gift roses and encourage self-care. Make a powder from dried rose petals either by using a mortar and pestle or a food processor. I actually use an old coffee grinder for making herbal powders and it works great. Mix the rose powder with either French Green Clay or another clay that suits the skin of your recipient (or yourself if this is a self-love gift) in the proportion of 1/3 rose powder, 2/3 clay. Example: 1 tablespoon rose powder mixed with 2 tablespoons clay. Store in a dark glass jar and mix one tablespoon at a time with either a water, a hydrosol, honey, or yogurt to apply. Actually, adding the powder mix to any of these one ingredient masks will make a multifaceted concoction, and you can choose if you want more of a firming, brightening, or evening out action. Leave on for 10-15 minutes, then rinse off with warm water. Skin will be moisturized, clean, firmer, and more even-toned.

Making a massage oil out of rose oil is as easy as adding the desired essential oils to the homemade rose oil. Aim for no more than 50-60 drops of essential oil per cup of base oil. You can also add in more base oils to the rose oil, so the mixture is more suited to the recipient’s particular skin. The heavier the oil, the more appropriate for dryer skin, and the lighter oils are more beneficial for oilier skin. Massage oil should not soak into the skin but rather allow for easy gliding, so sticking with sweet almond oil, avocado oil, apricot kernel oil, and grapeseed oil are good choices, especially when mixed together. Here’s a sample recipe including the aphrodisiac scents of rose, vanilla, and jasmine:

Massage Oil

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Making Massage Oil
1/2 cup Rose Oil (olive oil infusion)

1/2 cup Vanilla Oil (sweet almond infusion)

1/4 cup Avocado Oil

1/4 cup Apricot Kernel Oil

30 drops Sandalwood absolute in jojoba

40 drops Vanilla CO2 essential oil

5 drops Jasmine absolute in jojoba

 

I hope your Valentine’s day is full of love for your family, your friends, your partner, and yourself. We are experiencing the most snow in most of our lifetimes here in the Seattle region right now so I’ll be herbal crafting away happily this week. I also managed to make my first sourdough loaf this past weekend and it turned out splendidly! There’s a pic on my Instagram if you are interested.

Thank you for reading and Happy Valentine’s Day!

 

 

 

Sourdough Starter

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It is rather early in the process to share this out, but I’m so excited about it that I just can’t wait. I’ve started to make sourdough starter from einkorn flour and although it isn’t ready for baking yet, it’s actually started to bubble and show signs of life. It takes quite a few days to get it started, and then regular maintenance to keep it going, so why do it at all you might ask. Basically I’m doing it for taste, for health, and for optimum digestibility.

I first got interested in sourdough a few years ago when I read an article about a baker in California somewhere (San Jose?) that made sourdough bread that people with gluten sensitivities could actually digest. His starter was especially potent and his stand at the farmer’s market was so famous that he got into a national magazine about it. (I can’t remember which one~ it was years ago but I do remember I was reading the article in a doctor’s office waiting room so I couldn’t take it home.) Considering my sons and I have had issues with gluten for many years, I wanted to hear more about what makes sourdough more easily digested. After looking into it, I found out it has to do with the fermentation process which balances prebiotics and probiotics in any kind of fermented food such as yogurt of kimchee, which we all know are foods recommended for digestive health. It also seems that sourdough degrades gluten a bit in the baking process, unlike baker’s yeast, although it doesn’t degrade it completely so celiacs need to stick with gluten-free sourdough breads. Sourdough’s digestibility also has to do with the wild yeasts present, instead of baker’s yeast, which is over used and many people have mild to severe intolerances to it, whether they are aware of it or not. Sourdough bread also causes less of a sugar spike according to several studies, and is generally considered to have a lower glycemic index number than other breads.

Not all commercially prepared sourdough breads are necessarily good options. Look for artisan loaves at your local grocery store or farmer’s market, or join me in making your own! I’ve been following the YouTube tutorials by Jovial Food’s founder, Carla Bartolucci, as well as the tutorial in her book, Einkorn. She uses einkorn flour to make sourdough starter, and to bake all of her breads with, because einkorn is an ancient form of wheat that is also known to be more digestible than our current wheat today, even by some who have gluten intolerances. Einkorn still contains gluten, but due to the make-up and action of the gluten in this grain compared to modern wheat, it reacts differently in baking and also our bodies react differently to it. Baking with it is a little trickier than with modern wheat, which is why it has been largely ignored in the mass marketplace, but as Barolucci explains in her book, that ‘flaw’ is probably the same mechanism that makes it a blessing to those of us with sensitive digestive systems. I’ve made cinnamon scones and bread with einkorn before, and seem to be able to digest it, but I’ve also put a lot of effort into healing my intolerances. I’m excited to bake with sourdough and see if I can really make some breads that the whole family can eat, enjoy, and digest without any problems.

Here’s what I have so far: 581583FA-CC61-4980-BD9B-664CA0C9580B

It took about six days for the starter to show any signs of life, and it’s still not quite ready to bake with because according to Bartolucci, the starter needs to bubble up within six to ten hours of refreshing to be truly ready for the job of baking bread. Mine is close. I’ll post pics on Instagram as soon as I get a loaf baked. I’m not in any hurry though, knowing that this starter will last forever, as long as it gets routinely refreshed. I feel like I have a lifetime to work with it and am happy I’ll be able to pass some of it on to friends and family who bake.

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Here’s what refreshing looks like by the way:

Push away the top layer of the starter and scoop out the better looking stuff underneath into a fresh bowl.

Add warm water and stir it up into a creamy state.

Add more flour, mix it all together and form a ball, then place it in a clean container with a lid and let it rest for 12-24 hours.

Have you baked with sourdough before? Do you have a starter of your own that has a story? I’d love to hear how long you have had your starter and how you first obtained it~ whether it was given to you or you started from scratch like I’m doing. Any tips and tricks would be appreciated too! Thank you for reading, sharing, and subscribing.

 

Vanilla Oil DIY

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Vanilla is a delicious, comforting, and sensual scent that is much loved. Like so many other good things, vanilla also happens to be a little bit high maintenance. For starters, it is second only to saffron in expense, largely due to how vanilla has to be handled and processed, plus it also cannot be made into an essential oil in the same manner as other plants (through distillation). You can find absolutes and CO2 extracts, but usually these are already premixed with a carrier oil and quite expensive. No worries though, because just as with vanilla extract, it’s simple to make your own vanilla infused oil to use in any bath/body product you want such as the base of a perfumed body oil, in body butter, lip balm, bath oil, or body scrub, etc. I’ll most likely be making all of those in fact, and more, because vanilla is just so all-around lovely and mood lifting.

Ingredients:

2 or 3 whole vanilla beans

2 cups carrier oil such as jojoba, sweet almond, or grapeseed oil

Prepackaged
Bulk Bin

Set up a double boiler arrangement with the water simmering. (I use a pyrex measuring cup in a pot of water.) C1719A6F-412D-401F-859C-9BA7BCDE381C Cut the vanilla beans down the middle and scoop out the insides into the top of your double boiler, then chop up the beans and add them as well. Pour the carrier oil over the beans, stir occasionally, and add more water to the bottom of the double boiler as needed. 2370B7C6-7D90-4DC7-B5E5-20FD7B049162 It will take an hour or two, so do this when you know you’ll be home for a while. Strain the oil once it has cooled, or just leave the vanilla bits in the oil to impart more scent over time. (It’s impossible to get all those little seeds out so don’t worry about that.) I put half of a vanilla bean into each of my containers to keep the infusion process going. 3D4EB8D7-3071-42D4-9D7A-8536996187CD You can add vitamin E for preservative properties if you aren’t going to use the oil within a month or two. Different carrier oils have different shelf-lives, but jojoba has the longest of the three I mentioned. The other two, almond and grapeseed, have about a year or so of shelf-life. I don’t think any vanilla infused oil is at risk of not getting used within a year though, it smells too good!

Thanks for reading and please share with the vanilla lovers in your life. Happy health and sweet scents to you!