We have something great to celebrate in our family this week, and we will celebrate it with May bowl.
Recipe for May Bowle:
Crush a handful of sweet woodruff leaves (before flowering) into a pitcher. Pour a bottle of white wine over it - a glass pitcher will show off the beauty of this green-golden drink. Let sit it in the fridge for an hour or longer. – Enjoy!
Sweet woodruff (Galium odorata) is a woodland herb with a wonderful perfume to its leaves; the perfume stems from coumarin. Therefore people on coumadin should avoid it or drink it sparingly, coumadin being the man-made form of coumarin. By the way, sweet grass owns the same wonderful fragrance.
Sweet woodruff should only be harvested in May. It was one of the first things I planted in my garden – it likes dappled shade and a leafy soil.
In Europe, when I was little, they used sweet woodruff flavor in all kinds of candy; my favorite was fizzling soda powder (made famous in Günter Grass' novel The Tin Drum, where the protagonist Oskar Mathzerath sprinkles it onto the belly button of his love, adds some spit, and waits for the erotic results). Meanwhile, sweet woodruff is forbidden in Europe as a food additive because of suggestions it might cause cancer. Those results came from Petri dish studies, not from population studies.
Thus sweet woodruff illustrates human greed, again: Used once a year in a May bowl, it likely is harmless - more likely beneficial. Used as a flavoring everywhere all the time, it's bound to hurt. Remember, it took the White Man to turn the occasional peace calumet into a three-pack-per-day habit. As with tobacco, so with alcohol: Since my father was a drinker, I certainly don't want to entice you to imbibe May bowl more than on a rare occasion, in moderation!
Sweet woodruff also is an example how one scientific tidbit, taken out of context, is used to suppress herbal knowledge. Which is not to say I am against science - which I am not (being married to a scientist and trained in scientific medicine myself); just that scientific results should be taken with a grain of salt and some common sense.
So we will celebrate with May bowl – and might find a second occasion later this month. And then we have to wait for a full year before we can drink May bowl again. Read More
Blog: On Health. On Writing. On Life. On Everything.
Water Emergency
May 4, 2010
In the Boston area where I live, two million people have been under a spell for four days: They had a water emergency.
Of course, for a time now, there is a water emergency in the world. The UN created World Water Day (March 22, exactly a month before Earth Day) in order to pull attention to the fact that the rich countries are not conserving water, and the poor countries are suffering. Global warming will only make the situation worse.
So, back to Boston: Did we run out of water? No. Because of a main break, we were required to boil our water for two minutes before ingesting it. That led to a run on supermarkets, and in no time bottled water was sold out. People were panicking.
A neighbor called us in Maine to tell us of the catastrophe. We filled a 23 liter tank with our delicious Maine well water and headed home. Did I say “catastrophe”? Today the boiling water order was lifted. But it leaves me sad.
My mission (one of them) in life is to spread news about the health benefits of cooking your own dinner from scratch every evening – for your family, for yourself. As I see it, the catastrophe lies in this: People can’t cook – they can’t even boil water!
The good news: People might pay more attention to the world-wide water problem. Read More
Beltane in the Woods
May 3, 2010
Enter the Circle, the holy ring,
Behold what the Goddess of Life will bring.
The Circle of Day—Moon and Sun,
The Circle of Year—summer, fall, winter, spring,
The Circle of Life—babe, maid, mother, crone,
Dust to dust. The circle forms a new beginning.
Prime of year, joy of flowers—
Mystery of spring—of thee we sing.
Hallow the forces of spring and creation,
Leave behind your wintry sedation.
Green wood inspires, friendship blooms,
Fruitfulness soars and health resumes.
Last Friday was Beltane – yes, the night when witches fly around on their brooms. We were driving up to Maine to open our cottage . The sun went under in a pale, pale pink horizon under a spring-blue sky, promising a beautiful next day. Night settled and the evening star, Venus, appeared - the “lovers’ star.” The moon had just peaked two nights ago. It was eerie and lovely.
No, I am not into witchcraft. But I work with the same herbs the people of old tried to understand. Nowadays, science helps me out: You wouldn't believe how much biochemistry is floating around at herbal conferences!
But the renewal in spring is as vital now as it was for the ancient. If Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” would come true, the whole human race would perish. (Don’t worry about Gaia, our Earth - she would survive, repeople herself with a hopefully more gentle, considerate race. If not that, at least the molds and lichens and bacteria would survive, and start the process of evolution all anew).
Beltane has special meaning for me because I am a gardener and herbalist, because I depend on healthy nature all around me – and because a Beltane celebration in the woods opens my “Sebastian” novel (the poem is taken from it).
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