Bridget's Apothecary

I suppose we'll call this the unveiling...Bridget's Apothecary. I had been thinking about names that avoided using my (hard to spell/remember) name. I was researching patron saints of healing...which doesn't entirely work because all the saints are patron saints of healing in some sense, but there was a random website that listed St. Brigid as patron saint of healing. There are many delightful, varying, and sometimes contradictory stories about St. Brigid, one of them saying she prayed to have her beauty taken away, so that she would stop getting marriage proposals and be allowed to become a nun. Perfect for a business that sells body care/beauty products right? Ha. Don't worry, her beauty was restored after she became a nun, and she went on to be the patroness of Ireland. Bridget is my middle name, so I am using my name's spelling, rather than the more traditional Irish spelling. I also love that the name itself, while it means Strong, immediately brings to mind bridges, strong connective pathways between two very separate things.

An Apothecary, historically, was the person who prepared and dispensed herbal medicines. They would often mix up a certain kind of compound for each person's individual ailment. My hope is that through the make-and-learn sessions, we start to educate ourselves and become our own apothecaries. I would like to put simple healing tools within reach and encourage experimenting and tinkering with the recipes to find what works the best for each person.

Put them together and you've got Bridget's Apothecary!

I have started a new blog for the business, and a facebook page as well. I'll put links along the side of this page, feel free to "like" Bridget's Apothecary if you are on Facebook. I will be putting event listings on the blog and the facebook page, and recipes on the blog. Once again, thanks for the support!

www.bridgetsapothecary.blogspot.com
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bridgets-Apothecary/211718748854488
(once I have 25 fans on facebook, there will be a shorter link ;) )

Also, you can follow this blog (Avocado Eater) by email now, by putting your email in the box to the right and clicking subscribe!

Make and Learn

It's so funny how life works sometimes. I think I am learning a lot about myself, and how sometimes, even though I feel like I'm so slow to act, it's actually the right pace, the right timing. It's a good lesson in forgiving yourself for not being the person you think you're supposed to be right at this moment.

I had this idea to do small, friendly, fun classes at my house for probably six months now, maybe more. I kept thinking about all the little details that hadn't come together, or all of the supplies that I hadn't ordered yet. I also kept thinking (throughout last fall) that I should just send out the email, and the rest would fall into place. There's always that balance between pushing myself to just act, and slowly plotting everything out so that I can truly do something well. Now that I've had the second class--that I'm calling a "Make and Learn", I feel like my slow pace is actually just the right timing.

I have received such enthusiasm and support from the people who have come so far, (and also from those who couldn't come) that I've been energized and excited by it. I never thought that this could become something more than a random gathering, but my mind is definitely shifting in a new direction about it. How amazing would it be if I could turn something I truly enjoy doing, believe in, and want to share, into part of how I make a living? It's kind of a revelation to me.

So, slowly but surely, I have picked a name for the business, I'm having my friend design a label for my products, and I'm getting lots of great ideas and directions I could go and services I could offer. I'm still taking it a bit slow as I am in the middle of transition to some new jobs. And this spring in particular it occurs to me, do we all crave some kind of new direction in the springtime? Winter is coming to an end and the few warm days we've had, the tiny budding plants, everything is pointing to new growth and changing directions. Even that thought, that hope is a refresher.

Yes, here's to more blog posts, more ideas put into action, and lots of fresh growing plants in all of our lives! Next post will be on the homemade deodorant we made at the class this weekend. I've been using it since the fall, and it's the only deodorant I've EVER used that's worked for me :) Now that's saying something! More news of this side-business fun forthcoming as well!

I am so grateful for the support of friends and family in all of these new endeavors. Blessings to all of you.

Lotion and Lip Balm

Here are the photos and the recipes...okay there are no photos of the lip balm...see the post below. The one thing I would add is that if I didn't have distilled water on hand, I just boiled some tap water to get some of the bacteria out. And one thing to watch for is when you remove the melted oils from the double boiler, there will be beads of water and condensation on the bottom of your pan. Be sure to wipe it off before pouring into the blender or you will get water into your oil before you really meant to. Enjoy!

Rosemary’s Perfect Cream

From Rosemary Gladstar’s Herbal Recipes for Vibrant Health copyright 2001

Waters

2/3 cup distilled water (or rose water)

1/3 cup aloe vera gel

1 or 2 essential oil of choice

vitamins A and E as desired

Oils

3/4 cup apricot, almond, or grapeseed oil

1/3 cup coconut oil or cocoa butter

1/4 teaspoon lanolin

1/2 to 1 ounce grated beeswax

1. Combine the waters in a glass measuring cup. (Tap water can be used instead of distilled water, but it will sometimes introduce bacteria and encourage the growth of mold.) Set Aside.
2. In a double boiler over low heat, combine the oils. Heat them just enough to melt.
3. Pour the oils into a blender and let them cool to room temperature. The mixture should become thick, creamy, semisolid, and cream colored. This cooling process can be hastened in the refrigerator, but keep an eye on it so it doesn’t become too hard.
4. When the mixture has cooked, turn on the blender at its highest speed. In a slow, thin drizzle, pour the water mixture into the center vortex of the whirling oil mixture.
5. When most of the water mixture has been added to the oils, listen to the blender and watch the cream. When the blender coughs and chokes and the cream looks thick and white, like buttercream frosting, turn off the blender. You can slowly add more water, beating it in by hand with a spoon, but don’t overbeat! The cream will thicken as it sets.
6. Pour into cream or lotion jars. Store in a cool location.

Moirin’s Lip Balm

(Larger Batch- to make smaller batch, turn tablespoons to teaspoons!)

2 1/2 Tablespoons of Jojoba oil

2 Tablespoons of coconut oil

1/2 Tablespoon of lanolin

2 Tablespoons of beeswax

Melt the oils in a double boiler and pour into containers while still hot. If reusing old containers, be sure to clean and sterilize them first. As an added bonus, boiling them to sterilize removes any excess wax left in the container.

How I spent my winter vacation

Okay, not really. I had to finish these before my vacation so I could give them as presents! Strange to me that I have starting making body care products, because those are always the booths that I walk right by at craft fairs, really, I barely glance at them. I think what got me thinking about making my own, was Rosemary Gladstar's book "Herbal Recipes for Vibrant Health". I got it towards the end of the summer. The book itself is great, and also encouraged me to place a very large order with Mountain Rose herbs this fall. Maybe what drew me in was the use of herbs, and the blending and experimenting with what works for you, either for specific ailments, or for general health and happiness. These things always take me such a long time. It was probably a month after I decided that I wanted to try to make lotion using her recipe that I had finally gathered all the ingredients and set out to try it. Previously, I had been using straight coconut oil as a moisturizer, but after I made this stuff I was hooked! It is thick and luscious and creamy and smells like honey because of the beeswax in it. You could literally eat it...there's nothing artificial, or chemical in this one!

I also made my own lip balm recipe...loosely based on the ingredients of the Dr. Bronner's lip balm that I had and liked, and with ideas from Janice Cox's book "Natural Beauty at Home". This is another great book if you just want to try some fun beauty treatments from things you may have in your kitchen. I don't love all of her ingredients though. She doesn't mind throwing petroleum jelly into things, which I prefer to steer clear of, but she's got tons of recipes and is very thorough with the range of products she lists. Everything from scrubs, cleansers, hair, nail, lip treatments, men's products, soap-making, hair styling products, the list goes on...I don't think I've read them all, it's amazing what she fit in one book.

The third product I made was a healing salve from a recipe in Rosemary's book. It says it's for any type of bumps, bruises, rash, scars, etc. can even be used for diaper rash. I hadn't really tried it until a week or two ago when I went sledding. I kept trying to run and jump on the sled and I kept missing and slamming my knee right into the edge of the sled. I'm sure it was comical to see, but I blame my giant moon boots tripping me up. I was sure I was going to wake up with a swollen and bruised knee, but right before bed I remembered the salve, so I massaged it into and around the area that was hurt. It wasn't a miracle, I still got a bruise, but it wasn't really swollen and the bruise has healed fast and was not as painful as I had expected given the repeated beating. The three herbs in the salve, are comfrey, calendula, and st. john's wort. Calendula has been known to promote cell repair, comfrey can encourage healing of tissues, and St. John's wort is known for its treatment of damaged nerve endings (hypericum, its latin name is also the homeopathic remedy made from the plant).

So yes, perhaps I'm hooked on all three. Despite not wanting to really market and sell the stuff, (though I'm happy to sell it to people who want it) I do want to spread the word about how great and easy this is to do. To that end, I recently had a make-and-learn session at my house for the lotion and the lip balm. It was a great turnout, 9 lovely ladies and everyone got to take some of our concoctions home. I'm hoping to have at least a monthly event like this, and possibly travel with it, as my sister in Ohio promises me she could get her crunchy friends to come if we planned a date. Fun!

I'll post the recipes in a separate post so I can add the rest of the photos. And I think I'll do the salve separately, as it was probably the most time consuming...although it doesn't have to be if you plan ahead. Enjoy!

Cashew Burgers!

I recently borrowed a copy of Thrive (thanks Mom and Adelie!), and I'm loving it so far. It's interesting to me that it's marketed as a vegan guide to Optimal Performance in sports and life...because it really is about so much more than that. The author has an excellent grasp of the things that tax our health, not just physical stressors, but emotional and nutritional stressors, and has developed some exciting recipes that are packed full of nutrition and taste surprisingly good too!

The recipe originally calls for almonds on this one, but I had cashews. It also calls for balsamic vinegar, but I had apple-cider vinegar. I'm not sure how much I would like these raw, but I was truly surprised at how delicious they were. I made a sesame ginger sauce for them from Dr. Ben Kim's website which you can find HERE or at the bottom of this page. I brought these to a friend's house the night I made them, and they were so tasty that I had to make them again later that week. (I'm used to leftovers and getting to eat everything twice I guess :)) Many of his recipes call for a food processor, which I don't have, so I make everything a bit more chunky than it calls for. I have a coffee grinder that I don't use for coffee, so I actually used it to get the cashew into a more usable form. I usually don't trust already ground flax seeds (because the oils can turn rancid quite quickly once you break the shell of the seed), so the coffee grinder does a great job of grinding just enough to use for each recipe.

The sesame ginger sauce is totally addictive to me. You could probably switch the honey to agave nectar if you are worried about a blood sugar reaction, or cut down the amount. The first time I made it I was just looking for excuses to use it, when really I just wanted to eat it by the spoonful. You can make it thick for a dip (it's great for veggies), or a little more runny for a dressing. The sesame makes it high calcium and the fresh ginger and garlic give it a nice kick and are excellent for the immune system and blood circulation. Here are the two original recipes, enjoy!!

Almond Flaxseed Burger

2 cloves garlic

1 cup almonds

1/2 cup ground flaxseed

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

2 tbsp coconut oil, hemp oil, or blend of healthy oils

Sea salt to taste

Put all ingredients into a food processor, blend to desired consistency. Form into patties. Serve raw or bake at 300degrees for 35 min. or lightly fry over medium heat until golden brown, flipping once.

From Thrive, Brendan Brazier

Sesame Ginger Sauce from Dr. Ben Kim’s website:

Ingredients:

1/2 cup raw, organic tahini

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger

1.5 tablespoon organic honey

1 clove of garlic, crushed

Directions:

Blend all ingredients together in a food processor or a strong blender. For a thin, salad dressing-like consistency, add one tablespoon of water at a time as you blend until desired consistency is reached.

If you use just a tablespoon or two of water in total, the result will be a thicker sauce that can be used as a dip for a vegetable platter or a plate of steamed vegetables.

Why does Pizza make me so hungry??

So tonight was yet another night that I came home (from a grocery store, mind you) yet I hadn't thought of what I should eat for dinner. I started flipping through one of my cookbooks, and saw a recipe for a butternut squash pizza...yum. Then I realized I didn't have any yeast, or even any flour. But what I did have was an easy pizza dough mix that my mom had just sent me from her Wild Tree business (there's your plug mom). It was basically a mix of the flour yeast and sugar that you just have to add water to. Perfect! You didn't even really have to let it rise, it was super quick and easy, and kind of made me want to start making bread on a regular basis. I always forget how soothing the kneading part is. I think that's why I first loved making paper, there was such a lovely rhythm to it, that I could easily get lost in, alone, for hours.

I worked off of a couple of recipes, and put the butternut squash in some butter and oil with garlic and onion in the oven for 15 min while I prepared the pizza dough. I had thrown some quinoa in my rice cooker before I had decided what I was going to make, and it occurred to me at this point that a pizza is really just like a giant open faced sandwich. As long as you like the flavors together, anything goes. So I rolled out the dough, and layered quinoa first, then butternut squash mixture second, then bleu cheese last. Cooked it for about 12 min and it was great! Most of the flavor really came from the bleu cheese, but it felt like there was lots of nourishing goodness going on too.

Then comes the after attack. Part of the reason I usually avoid pizza as a dinner meal is that I get these intense sort of empty hunger pangs about an hour or so after eating it. This time, maybe an hour and a half later, I started having a sneezing fit. I sometimes get this when my blood sugar drops and I need to eat again, and I was starting to feel hungry. But it was a little more than that too, because I almost felt congestion forming in my throat too, like I was having an allergic irritation. (I don't want to say allergic reaction so much, because it wasn't as if my throat was closing up, it was more like mucous was forming...yum!) Then after the sneezing had calmed down, but I felt stuffed up, those kind of sharp hunger pangs came again. The kind that feel much more violent than just "hey you, I'm kind of getting hungry again down here"...more like "Why!!! Are we not EATing??? I will jab you til you fix this!!"

So I'm seeking advice on this one. Recently someone mentioned to me that wheat/gluten allergy can keep you from gaining weight, make you feel fatigued always, etc. I don't think I have celiac's, but it's one of those things I feel I should look into a little more. A sensitivity, or intolerance to some wheat perhaps? Kara, you are my expert on this one :)

Em, I'm calling on you as the expert on blood sugar here. Is there way that I could make this meal less empty feeling? Some better balance of protein to carb to fat? I'm wondering if I could just try out some gluten free pizza dough, which would take away the wheat and the empty carbiness of the flour and solve both problems.

The funny part is, I don't even like pizza that much, but this was so fun to make it would be a shame to have to avoid it always :)

Sesame Goodness

This recipe was given to me by a good friend, after she fed me some the last time I visited her in NYC...It's from Brendan Brazier's book "Thrive"...(he's a triathlete, and the book is on vegan nutrition)...It's great, it's sweet, it's crunchy and it is nutrient dense. Sesame seeds have lots of Calcium, Iron and Magnesium in them, just to name a few things. It's also an easy snack to have a few scoops of if you need a little pick me up.

I don't have a food processor, so I just mixed everything up in a bowl and it still tasted pretty good to me. Also I'm not actually sure that the seaweed I used was dulse. It's been awhile since I've seen it, and the Asian store I went to had no idea what I was asking for...but rest assured there is some kind of seaweed in there and it's not nori, or hijiki, or wakame :)

I made a batch and just ate it raw the first time, and then I doubled the batch and tried to cook some the second time. With mixed results. I really like the taste of the slightly toasted sesame seeds, but I had a heck of a time getting it off of the foil, as you can see. Any cooks out there know if it would work better if I used parchment paper? Actually I bought a cookie tray since then, so that might help.

Here's the recipe:
Lemon Crisps (Brendan Brazier, Thrive)
2/3 cup sesame seeds
1/3 cup agave nectar
1/4 cup lemon zest (yes go for organic)
2 Tablespoons dulse flakes
2 Tablespoons coconut oil
2Tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Mix it all together in a food processor (or just stir it :))

If you'd like to cook it, you can spread it out on a lightly greased (with coconut oil) tray, and cook 20 min. at 300 degrees F.

Yummy both ways.

On a personal note, I've been reading about herbal recipes for hormone balance, and one of the books recommended mixing your own herbal infusions to make a high calcium tea. That, combined with this recipe and one other sesame/high calcium recipe really seemed to make a difference in my hormone balance/imbalance symptoms, which is pretty exciting. I'll post the two others soon. A big part of what I love about healing with food/ herbs is that there are so many plant nutrients in each ingredient or herb. You actually nourish your body in a whole way...I'm sure it's not JUST the calcium in any of this that helped, but the calcium PLUS each and every nutrient working together. Again comes that feeling of everything being connected, keeping you aliving and thriving.