Your Practical Guide To Self Reliant Living
Elecampane (Inula helenium) is a perennial herb that grows wild around the world. It’d been used for generations as a flavoring and condiment, and it’s still used to make absinthe in Europe. Herbalists know it as a powerful expectorant, and harvest the roots to make herbal cough remedies.
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As the opioid epidemic worsens, people are desperate for natural pain relief options. Wild lettuce has been used for millennia as a natural herbal pain reliever, and now survivalists are touting it as a form of morphine that grows in your backyard. I’ve seen that catchy, click-bait headline a dozen times at least. “Wild Lettuce Works Like Opium!” Come on, can that possibly be true?
Trust me, I’d be all for a natural herbal pain reliever without nasty side effects or addiction. None the less, I’m skeptical. How does wild lettuce stand up to modern scientific testing? Time for a little research, and then I’ll try it out myself…for science.
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Pineapple weed (Matricaria discoidea) is often one of the first plants a budding forager tries as a kid. It can grow just about anywhere but has a gift for growing in the most uninviting locations. That includes places even dandelions cant take root.
Growing up in the desert in southern California, there was nothing but dust and sand on our playground. The only bit of life came from the tiny cracks in the asphalt handball courts, where enough moisture must collect from early morning dew. Pineapple weed thrived in those cracks when little else grew for miles in any direction.
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Early on in my foraging days, I took a weed walk with a local well-known forager. I learned some of my very first mushrooms that day, but the most interesting finds were plants I already knew. Red clover grows just about everywhere on my homestead, and while I knew it was medicinal, I had no idea that it is also a valuable wild food source.
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Getting your daily bread can be tricky if you’re out foraging. There are a number of wild plants that can be used as a wild foraged flour substitute, which will help stretch your food stores in times of need. They’ll also add flavor, nutrition and just plain fun.
Clover blossoms can be ground into a flour substitute that can substitute for up to 1/4 of the total flour in a recipe. While it’s not really “flour” in the proper sense, the ground blossoms add flavor and nutrition to plain white flour.
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When I first started studying herbs in high school, I didn’t really understand why anyone would need herbs for sleep. I slept perfectly well, waking up in the morning was the real problem. It wasn’t until college with stress and deadlines that I finally learned the true importance of valerian.
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Just about everyone knows what ginger looks like and that it’s a tropical plant. Before modern international trade, fresh ginger was a real treat. Early colonists in the US found a tasty substitute that that indigenous tribes had been using for centuries. There are two species, Asarum canadense in the East and Asarum caudatum in the West. Either way, it’s commonly known as wild ginger.
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Walking at the edge of the woods, I was intoxicated by the scent of roses. I could smell them from yards away, and I knew I had to make something with them. My countertop was already completely covered with small-batch wines and meads, though a rose mead sounds like a lovely idea. Something simple, that won’t take up more counter space for weeks on end. It’s time for a simple homemade rose cordial.
I’ve always considered cordial to mean a sweet alcoholic beverage. Simple syrup, vodka and something flavorful to infuse. My homemade limoncello, for example, is a type of lemon cordial. I’ve recently learned that a cordial doesn’t have to contain alcohol, and there are plenty of examples of commercial non-alcoholic cordials. Rose’s Lime Cordial is one example, though in that one the name rose is a brand, and it’s just lime juice and sugar.
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Walking at the edge of the woods in early June I ran across a breathtaking tree that I’d never noticed before. It was covered in white flowers with an intoxicating tropical scent. Plums and apples had long since stopped blooming and set fruit, and they leaves weren’t quite right in any case. Plucked off a few leaves and managed to identify a potent wild medicinal: Hawthorn.
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My first home in Vermont had a huge patch of bee balm growing right outside my bedroom window. I’d wake up to a flurry of hummingbirds in the summer, arguing over the nectar inches from my window glass.
There was never a need to put up a hummingbird feeder, the bee balm took care of it for me and provided for endless hours of entertainment in the summer.
But bee balm doesn’t just feed the birds and the bees. It’s a potent medicinal and a tasty edible too.
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