Product Description

Lavender oil to help you sleep--and for a deliciously soothing crème brûlée . . . fennel to aid digestion--and for a refreshingly cool salad with apple . . . garlic to cure infections--and for a great chunky gazpacho with lemon balm . . . dandelion as an effective blood purifier--and for a tasty lasagna with shiitakes . . . These are just some of the amazing uses and unique tastes featured in The Herbal Epicure, a one-of-a-kind treasury of practical gardening instruction, healing techniques, and fantastic recipes.

Here are the miracle medicines that our great-grandmothers nurtured on sunny windowsills and in kitchen gardens, the folk wisdom passed from generation to generation, and the latest scientific confirmation of the efficacy of these traditional remedies. In addition, The Herbal Epicure provides a varied collection of innovative, contemporary and heirloom recipes for favorite and newly rediscovered herbs like burdock, nettle, lambsquarters, and lovage. Gardeners, health-conscious people, and haute cuisine and organic cooks are joining forces to spread the joy of herbal cooking for great taste and total nutrition.

This carefully researched A-to-Z collection presents you with more than one hundred herbs, healing plants, and restorative fruits and vegetables--all selected for their health-promoting compounds, outstanding nutritive value, and indispensability for flavorful cooking every day and on special occasions. An experienced organic gardener as well as an inspired cook and recipe collector, Carole Ottesen tells you everything you need to know for tapping into each herb's potent properties, including:

- How to cultivate herbs and plants, indoors and out
- Knowing stem from stern: the uses of leaves, flowers, and roots
- Botanical facts and healing traditions--including feverfew for melancholia and anxiety, heart's ease for heartache, and parsley for good digestion
- Preparing medicinal teas, infusions, tinctures, ointments, sachets, syrups, beautifiers, and many other forms of application
- Delicious recipes for blackbean cornmeal muffins; lambsquarters crepes; elderberry flower tempura; crab cakes with beebalm; peppermint sorbet, and dozens of other dishes that bring elegant new flavors to the dinner table

Beyond an introduction to growing and using herbs, The Herbal Epicure gives you the wherewithal for a lifelong partnership with the earth--and all the joys of good gardening, good food, and good health.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #548630 in Books
• Published on: 2001-01-30
• Released on: 2001-01-30
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 9.18" h x .79" w x 6.09" l, 1.01 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

From Amazon.com
Novice and seasoned gardeners alike will discover sprig upon sprig of useful information in this rich combination herb primer/cookbook. Drawing from her own organic gardening experience--a 20-year labor of love inspired by an attempt to make her family "entirely self-sufficient"--author Carole Ottesen tells the story of growing and cooking with more than 100 healing herbs. A helpful sketch of each plant shares a full page with its general facts (including botanical name, use, and harvest time). After Ottesen discusses her own relationship to the herb--buying Mexican mint after her tarragon plants expired; discovering plants of gotu kola for sale at the local garden center--she relates interesting facts regarding the herb's historical use, its various healing properties, whether it's approved by the German Commission E, and how the little treasure prospered (or didn't) in her own garden. She also offers a handful of savory recipes showcasing the featured herb. Here, Ottesen's schooling at l'Academie de Cuisine in Bethesda, Maryland, mixes delightfully with her wit and kitchen savvy. Recipes range from entrées like Hyssop Chicken for Sadness to simple accents (Carrots with Rosemary Butter); from tinctures and teas to elegant desserts (The Only Good Fruitcake). Her cozy writing style and true wealth of carefully detailed knowledge about each herb make this guide much more than a mere cookbook or herbal encyclopedia: each entry reads like a letter from a dear friend, and a highly informed one at that. --Liane Thomas

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Healing Plants for Use or for Delight

Aloe

Aloe Vera

Botanical name: Aloe vera, Liliaceae.

Common name: Aloe.

Description: Perennial, evergreen succulent.

Height: To 2 feet.

Flowers: Yellow, on long stems.

Leaves: Fleshy, pale green, sometimes spotted white, with spines.

Harvest: Cut leaves for gel as needed.

Culture: Zones 9 and 10. Aloe will live contentedly in a container,
requires fast-draining soil, and will survive in light shade.

Use: Gel from aloe leaves is soothing for burns, psoriasis, and itchy
scalp.

Comments: When taken internally, aloe gel is a dangerously potent
purgative.

Nearly thirty years ago, I bought an aloe plant at a roadside stand in
Florida. Despite benign neglect, that plant grew into a great strapping
specimen, eventually producing a necklace of young plants at its base.
Then, one fatal fall, I left the aloe family outside too long. The
mother plant froze and seemed to melt away, but in the shelter of the
big plant some of the babies survived--including one that lives in my
sunniest window today. Aloe is an easy-to-grow, forgiving plant.

Aloe has been used medicinally since pharaonic times to treat burns, to
reduce excess mucus, and to embalm. It is said that Cleopatra was
massaged with aloe gel to make her skin beautiful. Later, Pliny, the
Roman naturalist, recommended that aloe be taken internally as a
laxative. Modern scientific studies show that these traditional uses are
valid. According to Dr. James Duke's database, aloe gel is
anti-inflammatory and antiseptic, and is a moisturizer and a tissue
restorative. It is safe and effective for external use.

Aloe is superb for burns, itching, and sunburn and has been used to
treat radiation burns. The leaves contain a clear gel that is
tremendously soothing and speeds healing. When the gel dries, it forms a
natural, see-through bandage. Mixed with almond, olive, or coconut oil,
the gel is effective in healing psoriasis.

The German Commission E placed aloe on its approved list as effective
for constipation. However, taken internally, aloe is a powerful
purgative; it is all too easy to overdose. I strongly recommend you
stick to external applications with this plant.

Using Aloe

1. Cut an outer leaf from the base of the plant.

2. With a sharp knife, make a slit on the flat side of the leaf from
the base to the tip. Be careful not to cut all the way through.

3. Fold back the outer skin of the leaf to expose the inside.

4. Scrape out the gel with a spoon.

5. Apply the gel to burned skin, mix it into shampoo, or add it to
suntan lotion.