China Bayles' Book of Days (35 page)

Read more about making iced tea:

Iced Tea: 50 Recipes for Refreshing Tisanes, Infusions, Coolers, and Spiked Teas
, by Fred Thompson

Balm’s lemony aroma makes it a candidate for the teapot as well as a garnish for summer drinks and salads. Use it in potpourri and flower arrangements, too. It’s delicate flavor is lost in cooking or drying, although its mint-and-lemon scent remains.

—MADALENE HILL & GWEN BARCLAY,

SOUTHERN HERB GROWING

JUNE 17

Today is Eat Your Vegetables Day. (No kidding.)

Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon.

—DOUG LARSON

Grill Those Veggies

Hamburgers on the grill for supper? Throw on a few herb-marinated vegetables, and your everyday meal will go gourmet. Here’s a marinade that will perk up the blandest zucchini:

HERBED MARINADE FOR VEGETABLES

This recipe makes enough for 2 pounds of vegetables; it will keep up to 10 days. Vegetables with great grilling potential: pattypan squash, zucchini, eggplant, bell pepper, mushrooms, potatoes, tomatoes, onions.

¼ cup soy sauce
¼ cup balsamic vinegar
¼ cup olive oil
¼ cup water
2 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon fresh rosemary; chopped, or ½ teaspoon dried
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves, or ½ teaspoon dried
1 teaspoon fresh basil, chopped, or ½ teaspoon dried
1 teaspoon fresh oregano, chopped, or ½ teaspoon dried

2 cloves garlic, pressed or finely minced
freshly ground pepper to taste

Whisk all ingredients in a small bowl. Cut the vegetables into pieces about ¾-inch thick, to allow them to cook evenly and quickly. Arrange in a shallow container, pour the marinade over them, cover and refrigerate 2 hours, turning occasionally. (The longer the marinade, the more flavorful the vegetables.) Cook about four inches from the coals, brushing with marinade as they brown and turning to grill both sides. A grilling basket will keep them from diving into the fire.

Herbs that complement vegetables:

Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie

—GARFIELD

JUNE 18

I am thinking of the lilac-trees that shook their purple plumes, and when the sash was open, shed fragrance through the room.

—ANNA S. STEPHENS

Make Mine Misty

Sometimes just the simple memory of a fragrance is enough to lift our spirits; at other times, it takes something a little more substantial. You can create a daily “spa experience” for yourself if you have a supply of fragrant herbal mists in your refrigerator, ready for a cooling, spirit-raising face and body spritz made of a therapeutic hydrosol, or flower water. Hydrosols are produced from herbal material by a steam-distillation process and preserve many of the healing qualities of the herb or flower. Inexpensive as a facial and body splash, hydrosols are moisturizing, fragrant, and cooling. What’s more, you can use them as a base to create your own fragrances.

You can spritz with the flower water alone, or add aloe vera juice (the juice, not the gel) as an additional moisturizer. Here are a couple of easy formulas to help you get started; experiment by adding a few drops of essential oil until you have created a personal favorite. Hydrosols are available from herb shops, or on-line. Aloe vera juice is available at the drugstore.

LUSCIOUS LEMONY MIST

½ cup lemon verbena hydrosol
2 teaspoons aloe vera juice
5 drops lemongrass essential oil

Pour all ingredients into a 4-ounce glass spray bottle and shake vigorously. Refrigerate. To use, shake, then spray skin lightly, avoiding the eyes.

INVIGORATING MEADOW MIST

(try this on hot, tired feet at the end of a long day)

½ cup rosemary hydrosol
2 teaspoons aloe vera juice
4 drops orange essential oil
2 drops grapefruit essential oil

CALMING CHAMOMILE MIST

(just right after a stressful day)

½ cup chamomile hydrosol
2 teaspoons aloe vera juice
4 drops rose essential oil
4 drops lavender essential oil

To take away freckles: Distil Elder Leaves in June and wash with a Spunge with this Liquor Morning and Evening.

—THE RECEIPT BOOK OF CHARLES CARTER, COOK TO THE

DUKE OF ARGYLL, 1732

Read more about creating a “spa experience”:

Secrets of the Spas: Pamper and Vitalize Yourself at Home
, by Catherine Bardey

JUNE 19

Father’s Day is usually celebrated about this time.

There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance . . . I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died.

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, HAMLET

Rosemary: Preserving Memories

The knowledge of rosemary’s special preserving capabilities goes back a long way. Thousands of years ago, people who lived around the Mediterranean noticed that rosemary leaves slowed spoilage in fresh meat. About the same time, in Egypt, embalmers began using rosemary to make mummies. These demonstrations of the herb’s ability to preserve led people to believe that rosemary could also preserve memory. Which is why Greek and Roman students wore garlands of rosemary when they studied.

It wasn’t long before the plant became associated with the idea of remembrance. A funeral wreath included rosemary as a sign that the living would always remember the dead. Rosemary in a bridal bouquet symbolized the couple’s lifelong remembrance of their wedding vow. During the Middle Ages, this association transformed rosemary into a love charm. If you were tapped by a rosemary sprig, there was no way out: It was love until death. So by the late sixteenth century, when Ophelia hands Hamlet a rosemary sprig “for remembrance,” the play’s audience understood that Ophelia was in love with him and could guess that his rejection—coupled with her grief at the death of her beloved father—meant her death. The plant was irretrievably linked to love and death, and to the eternal recollection of both.

Modern science has explained rosemary’s remarkable preservative properties, and tells us why this herb may actually help us to remember. It turns out that the plant contains powerful antioxidants which slow the cell breakdown that causes decay and spoilage—antioxidants so potent that Japanese researchers have demonstrated rosemary’s efficacy as a replacement for chemical preservatives. Importantly, German scientists have found that these same chemicals also help to slow the breakdown of acetylcholine in the brain, and may retard memory loss in early-stage Alzheimer’s victims. One American herbalist even suggests that the traditional rosemary rinse that makes your hair shiny may also help you remember to buy shampoo.

So there you are—rosemary, a remarkably helpful herb.

Remember it.

Read more about rosemary:

Growing and Using Rosemary
, Storey Country Wisdom Bulletin A-116, by Bertha P. Reppert

Make thyself a box of rosemary wood and smell it oft and it will keep thee youngly.

—BANCKES HERBAL, 1525

JUNE 20

The summer solstice occurs about this time: the shortest night and the longest day of the year.

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

—MAX EHRMANN, DESIDERATA

Midsummer Magic

On the Summer Solstice, the sun reaches its highest point in the sky and begins its downward plunge into the darkness of winter. For pagan peoples, this was an awe-inspiring event of profound significance, and herbs and flowers gathered at this time were thought to have magical qualities. Fern seeds could make you rich, and maybe even make you invisible. Mugwort could bring you a valuable dream—and whatever you dream on Midsummer’s Night is sure to come true. And the sprightly yellow blossoms of chase-devil, or Saint-John’s-wort (
Hypericum perforatum
) would shield you from the power of evil spirits during the coming dark.

CHASING THE DEVIL

Hypericum has been in use for more than 2,000 years. Early people hung it over their doors and above their religious icons to ward off evil spirits. In Northern Europe, it was worn to repel demon lovers and burned in Midsummer ritual bonfires as a protective incense. In some areas, cattle, sheep, and horses were driven through the smoke to protect them, as well. After the Catholic Church established the Feast of St. John as a substitute for the pagan midsummer celebration, chase-devil was still tossed into the ritual flames but under its new and more politically-correct name—Saint-John’s-wort. (
Wort
is the Anglo-Saxon word for herb or plant.) During medieval times, the Europeans used Saint-John’s-wort to treat melancholia, which they viewed as a form of possession by the devil. A thirteenth-century list of medicinal plants referred to it as
herba demonis fuga
—an herb to chase away devils. In 1630, Italian physician Angelo Sala wrote that Saint-John’s-wort had an excellent reputation for treating illnesses of the imagination, melancholia, and anxiety. By the nineteenth century, it was being regularly prescribed as a mood-enhancer, to treat depression.

And of course, that is chiefly why we use it today—and with confidence, for numerous clinical studies have demonstrated its usefulness in treating mild depression. The next time you reach for Saint-John’s-wort to banish the blues, remember that people have been using this remarkable herb to chase this particular devil for centuries.

Read more about the magic of St. John’s wort:

St. John’s Wort: The Mood-Enhancing Herb
, by Christopher Hobbs