Time for Thyme

Thyme, Thymus vulgaris

Small, demure, hardy, reliable and under-used all describe Thyme, Thymus vulgaris. Nothing flashy about this herb, steady as she goes is an apt description for her. This tiny leaved, robust flavored herb gives an edgy flavor to winter cooking. Thyme honey off the spoon or in a cup of tea for a sore throat. Thyme oil, whoa...way too strong for the home medicine chest. I learned this the hard way when I put a few drops of thyme oil in a bath for my son when he was 10. That was over 29 years ago, and I still remember his squeals as he jumped out of the tub."Ants are biting me! Ants are biting me!"A perfect description of the burning sensation of thyme essential oil on the skin even diluted in a bathtub full of water!

An easy herb to grow, simple garden thyme, is a small, woody shrub growing 1'x1', loves the sun and well-drained, even gravelly, soil. Easily started from seed, cuttings or pegging a stem down and covering with earth until roots strike, this member of the mint family owes it's robust flavor and scent to volatile oils found in the leaves. After years of consideration, I no longer use essential oils in my practice preferring the natural scent of whole plants in my cooking and medicine making. In the mild NW climate one can harvest thyme any time of year.

A culinary herb of high regard, used whole and fresh or dried, thyme's tasty contribution to foods is a delight. For a quick breakfast or tasty side at dinner try these easy potato latkes...

Potato Leek Latkes
Shred 2 potatoes into mixing bowl
add the following:
1/2 cup finely chopped leek, onion or chives 

Latke ingredients ready for milk & eggs

3-4 chopped dandelion leaves, 
parsley as you like
1-2 tablespoon fresh thyme stripped and minced
2 eggs
1 cup of milk
2 tablespoons flour
a pinch of salt and dash of pepper
Mix thoroughly and fry on a hot, greased skillet until potatoes are done
Enjoy with applesauce and sour cream or yogurt

thyme enhances the flavor of potato dishes adding warmth and pizazz to your nourishing winter menu. A member of the mint family, thyme's warmth supports digestion when a warming element is called for. Used on a regular basis in food, thyme aids digestion and strengthens immune function.

Thyme, Thymus vulgaris, Garden thyme

Thyme Honey
Cut 1-2 hands full thyme and strip leaves from stems
Fill small jar with thyme 
Fill jar again with honey 
Macerate in warm place for at least 1 month. 
Best made in summer when thyme is growing fast for use in winter when thyme growth slows 
Thyme honey off the spoon or in a cup of hot water as tea relieves a sore throat, relaxes the trachea and clears congestion when a cough persists and gently strengthens the body's ability to fend off outside pernicious influences. 

By having 1 or 2 thymes in the dooryard garden you have food & medicine close to hand. There are many species and varieties of thyme to add to your garden. In a future post we'll take a look at them and how they can enhance your garden experience.
For now, be sure to get outside every chance you can and enjoy the green blessings of the winter season.

Herby Hedgerow Punch for Winter Health

Darkness and festiva are upon us! Music and gaiety, light and colors abound. Friends gather to sing, dance, share food and remember. For what is remembered lives! In this time of darkness, a sweet, earthy scent tickles my nose and I am enveloped in her arms once again. A scent anchored in dark, crumbly forest duff and humus rich soils of the river valleys where I live and which supports the revelry of the season.

Hedgerow Punch on a bed of cedar with Brandied Tart Cherries

Over the last dozen years or so, a distant memory living in hedges has slowly been taking root in my mind and body in delicious detail. This season of sharing, caring and reaching out in darkness has given rise to a new winter beverage here at RavenCroft Garden.

Herby Hedgerow Punch, was inspired by my friend, Blanca. She hails from Puebla, Mexico where they call a winter punch, Ponche. She offered me my first taste of Ponche one New Year's Eve. Ponche is a delicious, fruity warm beverage traditionally made and shared through the winter holiday season in Mexico Central and South America. Ponche can be made with guava, pineapple, fresh sugar cane, apples and oranges and always, tejocote, C. mexicana, a species of Hawthorn. All this prompted me to create a NW version using local fruits and herbs as a winter tonic. 

Anyone who has visited this blog knows the gnarly old hag, Hawthorn, has been one of the main characters showing up through every season. We've learned that there may be up to 2718 species of Crataegus around the globe in the temperate northern latitudes. Everywhere in the world Crataegus grows, people revere this small, hardy tree and use her as food, medicine and more.  In gardens, as street trees, in kitchens and in the wild hedges and edges, hawthorn is at home.

These days I can't go anywhere that hawthorn doesn't jump out from a hedge, city park or trailside to once more impress upon me the richness of diversity, adaptability and down right willingness to share her bounty and beauty in any season.

Crataegus mexicana with a smaller local hawthorn

This week that crafty Crataegus almost lept off the shelf of our local tienda. Betty, the gregarious, bilingual clerk caught me reading the label on the tejocote jar. "You know tejocote?"she asked. "I know many of her friends, cousins, and sisters. I'm just getting acquainted with this hawthorn", I responded. "Are you making ponche?" Betty inquired. "Yes, I am crafting a recipe for ponche!" "Oh, then let me show you the fresh tejocotes in back, people are brewing ponche now, so we have fresh ones, much different than processed!" She was so right. Large, yellow and buttery in their texture, like eating pudding or mayhaws.

And so, C. mexicana, has joined the merry caravan of Hawthorn traveling through this walk in beauty adventure…Here is a recipe for you to play with and enjoy! A little wild, a little store bought and a whole lot of fun to create and serve with your friends this holiday season.

A-boon-dance from hedges and edges

Herby Hedgerow Punch

1 cup dried hawthorn berries and/or
6-9  fruits of C. mexicana fresh or canned, if you have a tienda nearby...
1/2 cup dried apricots
1/2 cup dried cherries
1/2 cup dried wild plums 
1/2 cup rosehips
1/2 cup walnuts or hazelnuts, chopped
1/2 cup burdock, astragalus, elecampane or asparagus root or any other nourishing root you have on hand
1/2 cup reishi or devil's club root bark or any other tonic roots or fungi you have on hand
2-3  4" cinnamon sticks
6-8 oz Piloncillo cones chopped (dried sugar cane juice) You can use honey or other sweetener of choice. No added sweet is OK, too.
5 quarts water

Bring hawthorn, roots and/or fungi and cinnamon sticks to a slow boil in all the water, then turn down heat and simmer 3-4 hours. Strain decoction here as hawthorn berry has very hard seeds and fungi are inedible.

Return decoction to pan. Add piloncillo, dried fruits, roots and nuts. Bring to a soft boil, turn down heat and simmer for 1-2 hours. Your recipe can be as simple or extravagant as resources allow. I use the back of a wood stove to brew the punch, a crock pot works as well.

Once the punch is well blended in flavor and the dried fruits are soft, add fresh apples and pears and a small orange or lemon sliced thin…continue to simmer until the fresh fruit is soft but not mushy. 

Serve the brew in cups. For adults, a couple brandied tart cherries and their juice is a festive addition...

Eat the fruit in bowls alone or over yogurt or ice cream for a treat or on your cooked cereal for breakfast! I occasionally run the fruit through a sieve and enjoy the pulpy fruit drink expressed.

As the punch travels through my classes and people taste the fruity punch, a myriad of memories begin to surface…

"Oh, that tastes like the punch my grandma from Russia made when I was little, she called it compote." 

"I remember something like this that my grandmother made with rose hips and fruit" a voice from a friend whose family hails from Sweden concurs.

And yes, now a grandmother myself, amazing recipes are filtering through. With a few mischievous local flourishes they will live on, nourishing, tonifying and bringing cheer through the dark time. Rich and filled with laughter and story these Ponches bring people together in celebration and wonder!

Do you have a favorite winter punch using fruit and herbs to keep you and your family well through the winter months? Let me know if this recipe inspires you to carry it forward with your own flourishes! 

Be sure to bundle up and go outside and play! 

Be well, until next time...

Bright Blessings, my friends, 
may winter nourish the depths of our souls
in times such as these!

Grapes, Vines & Dolmas, Cooling Fare

Do you grow grapes? Have you ever wondered how to make brined grape leaves? Did you know grape leaves have been used in herbal healing for millennia? Come along with me on a little excursion and find out why you might want to grow grapes for food and drink and enjoy the vines as well. Yes, there is the wine which goes without saying. And, then, there are the vines themselves. The twisting, turning entwining nature of their growth habit; their water seeking, mineral loving, deep rootedness. Dancing with them is a full on pleasure for this gardener. Today we're going to explore grape leaves and how to use them in daily life.

Okanagan Riesling grapevine

This season promises exceptional bounty for the Okanagan Riesling growing up and over one of many arbors at RavenCroft Garden. A few years back several arbors rose from the earth here. A phase of three dimensional gardening brought fragrant honeysuckles, grapes and roses to the garden. Plant life lifted from earth, a pleasure to walk beneath and beautiful points of transition from one room of the garden to another, a place to inhale a cool, plant infused breath before walking on. Much as we move from one stage of our life to another or one part of the day to another is augmented by creating a structure for life to move within.

Understanding how the vine grows and, as a gardener, how I can direct its life flow to embrace the essence of grape and create a bountiful harvest of fruit is a study in approach. This season there is such an abundance of fruit, thinning is necessary for grape ripening. Early spring rains and a warm start to summer boosted the fruiting and flowering bushes, trees and shrubs in the Snoqualmie Valley toward abundant yields.

What is so exciting about grapevines and leaves beyond observing their growth habit and patterns? In my experience and the tales of countless others, they are a proven platform on which food, drink and medicine dance. On a deep level, food is a strong thread in weaving a healthy life and cultivating health just makes sense. 

Green grapes forming for use in verjus

Grapes hold deep nutrition in their very essence. The leaves are cooling, mineral rich and tasty. They have a sour taste with a hint of bitter. Using taste as a guide, the tonic effect of grape leaves supports clearing congestion, reducing inflammation and clearing heat at the blood level. Grape leaves have been used to assuage fever, inflammations and infections for eons of time in areas where they naturally grow and, today, grapes are found around the globe. When Viking travelers visited this continent they described the land as Vinland, the land of vines, referring to the abundance of wild grapes they found. 

Along with an interesting history, science is investigating some of the constituents that have a dynamic effect on the body. Two of note are anthocyanidins, which tone tissue in veins and capillaries improving circulation, and quercetrin, a flavonoid and structural protein known to reduce inflammation and build a strong collagen matrix throughout the body, necessary for healthy skin and connective tissue. In other words, adding grape leaves to your diet helps hold you together, allows your blood to flow freely and cools excess heat in your body. As with all plants, there are too many constituents to unravel so embracing the practice of using whole plants allows body and plant to find the best way to dance together to support health.

Cool shade under the grape arbor

From a nourishing and tonifying perspective, the benefits are on-going and increase with regular ingestion! As an herbal food with minimal toxicity, you can  enjoy them as you would any other food.

Once blanched and brined, the flavor of the leaves shifts to tangy and bitterness softens. Grape leaves are perfect for wrapping vegetables, grains and meat to create hand food. I have a penchant for doing all kinds of activities with my hands and eating food is one of my favorite.

Here are two recipes to get you started with grape leaves as a contributing actor in your cast of thousands on your journey in a life filled with optimum nourishment.

Brined Grape Leaves

From vine to brine

If you are not growing a grapevine, walk around your neighborhood and see if anyone in your area has one. Grapes are vigorous growers and when I've been without vines, people have  shared their abundance willingly. By the time the vines have leaves large enough to brine, they are ready for pruning to encourage fruit production. A great way to meet your neighbors!

First, imagine how many grape leaves you will use in a 1 year cycle.  I like to brine at least 5 pints of leaves for later use. I pack the leaves in bundles of 5 with approximately 11 bundles per pint, yielding 275 brined leaves to use throughout the year.

Select leaves the size of your hand or a bit larger. Cut them from the stem right at the juncture of the leaf so no stem is left on the leaf. Little bits of stem cause tears during processing and rolling later.

4 qts water
4 oz kosher salt
100-200 grape leaves
3-4 pint canning jars with sealable lids

1.  Place water and salt in kettle bring to boil then turn to simmer
2.  Stack grape leaves, by size, in piles of 5 (more than 5 are difficult to work with when stuffing)
3.  Set piles in hot brine with a weight to hold under for 30-60 seconds (I use a potato masher as the weight use creative license here)
4.  Remove from hot brine, carefully place in pan with cold water keeping stacks together
5.  Remove from cold water and drain on rack. Next, roll stacks into cigar shaped tubes on a level surface and put into pint jars. The tubes will be too long for the jar so after jar is filled, bend them all over in one direction to fit.
6.  When all jars are filled, bring brine back to boil and pour into each jar to fill. Cap and screw bands on jars. Turn upside down to seal. When cool place in refrigerator or store in cool cellar. 

Fresh leaves, brined rolled leaves and dolmas

Tasty Dolma Recipe

3 c. cooked rice
1 c. cooked ground meat (a great place for the odd leftover chicken, pork, beef or lamb... grind in a meat grinder)
3 T fresh mint, minced
3 T fresh chives, minced
1/3 c. fresh parsley, minced
1 T ground cinnamon
1/3 c. raisins soaked in 1/3 c. orange liquor
1/3 c. almonds, chopped
1 tsp salt
2 lemons, juiced
3/4 c. olive oil

Mix all ingredients in a bowl, add olive oil and lemon juice. Let rest while you drink a cup of refreshing herbal infusion. Then, stuff 1-T mixture onto each grape leaf at leaf junction with leaves vein side up. Tuck sides in and roll toward top of leaf. Place rolled dolmas in glass dish, pour more lemon juice over finished dolmas and refrigerate. Enjoy!

Wines, brines, brandied cherries, kim chi, beets, jams! 
It's summer time and the livn' is easy!

Out of the Box Food Camp will return in August, 2019. Verjus, Ode to Joy soft cheese, Audrey's Fermented Crock Dills and so much more await you. Your curiosity will reach new zeniths as EagleSong, herbalist and artisan food maker with 4 decades practice takes you on a journey you'll want to remember!!!

Until next time, go outside and thank the sun, well, for everything! Then, cool off with a feast of dolmas! Enjoy!!!