"My Mother's Booke..." two works in progress

"My Mother's Booke..." is the title of a lecture I give about the legacy of the William Penn family women as revealed in the handwritten books they left behind.  In the case of the Penns, these included ledgers and account books, and an amazing cookbook/medicinal manuscript.  One of the Penn sons had this last one copied out for him before he set sail for Pennsylvania, and to our luck he chose to use the blank pages at the end of his Grandmother's recipe book, Lady Katherine Partridge Springett: an oculist and herbalist in England the 1640's.  In this way two books had come down to us, though none of that was immediately evident and had to be teased out of the clues in the book, the handwriting and usages.

These books offered me a glimpse into the stillroom of the past, the place where medicines were made, liqueurs and cordial waters compounded, poultices and fomentations prepared. It links us to these herbalists through the most basic components of life: their food and drink and medicine.  This is the reason for the title of this blog, which i hope will be your glimpse into my stillroom.






There are very few images of women in their stillrooms, but in this c1736 picture shows a well-stocked
herbal laboratory and its confident mistress.

  






































 My Mother, Maxine Rose Booth Vannais, was a wonderful cook, and after her death last year, her file boxes of recipes were lovingly saved and her worn and taped-together cookbooks added to our shelfs.
But having studied cookbooks, it got me to thinking...

So I have decided to put together a small volumn of her recipes
 ( or receipts, as they were called in the 17th century)

 which you can read more about in the sidepage
Perhaps my own version of  "MY Mother's Book"
                                                          without the 17th century "e"

By the way,
 I am giving an expanded version of
 "My Mother's Booke" a look at the herbal legacy of European women"
 at the Women's Herbal Conference this August in New Hampshire this year.
 JOIN US!
It is a wonderful fun learning space among the beauties of nature: us and the trees!

http://www.womensherbalconference.com/

Bergamots, revisited ...

Citrus bergamia, a small citrus tree with pear-shaped fruits, is the source of BERGAMOT essential oil, and the additive that makes Earl Grey and Lady Grey teas. It's a classic ingrediant in many eau de cologne recipes, flavoring candies and cookies, as well as being used aromatherputically. (CAUTION: external applications may cause photo-sensitivity in some people)

I found this recipe on a great website called hungrycravings.

Bergamot Orange Dreams

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4    cup  cornstarch
1/4    tsp kosher salt
6 ounces unsalted butter, at room temp
1 cup powdered sugar
1 TBsp grated Bergamot Orange zest
2 TBsp fresh Bergamot Orange juice

Preheat to 350.  Whisk together flour, cornstarch, and salt in medium bowl.
Beat butter and 1/3 powdered sugar until light and creamy. Add orange zest and juice slowly. Add dry mix on low until dough starts to come together.  Scoop in TBSP dough balls, arranged about 1" apart on parchment.  Bake 16-18 minutes, until light brown on bottom, pale on top.  Transfer to rack to cool for 1/2 hour, then roll them in the remaining sugar.

Makes 32 to 34 cookies. 
Cookies keep for several days in a tightly closed container in cool, dry place.
@ Lucy Vaserfirer



The native Bergamot Mints are another whole story...
(See page on sidebar for more...)

Drying Weather, On the Road

Hot, Hot, Hot.
Its been blazing HOT here in Philadelphia, days upon days of the upper ninety's. I am lucky enough to enjoy two get-aways: one to a cool mountaintop glacial lake in Pennsylvania, with forests of still healthy hemlocks and majestic white pines, and one get-away to the beach. From each I bring back plants.

From the mountains, my friend Penny had a lovely overgrown patch of double-curley mint -- deeply resinous and fragrant. I gather generous bundles, knowing it will come back literally twice as thick for her after my ministrations.  I gather an unruley pile.  I learned from my teachers to try to focus on the plant I am leaving behind, rather than that which  I am taking, when I gather...in respect for the plant. I leave an offering, and fall into a meditation with a little hum as I bend and cut, bend and cut, fragrance all around me.

Mint.

For mental clarity and focus. It soothes the stomach, mildly stimulating the nerves.

By the time we get back home, the two bundles I have stowed on the back deck are already dried.
Tired as we were, we chatted the whole. way. home.

Mostly we walked in the beautiful forest, botanized, swam and admired the ruins of last year's Fairy houses, renewed old ties.




These hefty building materials must provide shelter for sizeable gnomes...

 

...stone-loving gnomes with fairy fencing.

Just  two days later, I am dazzled by the illuminated haze of a misty morning at the jersey shore.

Ahh...sand-scoured feet and hands: the ultimate spa treatment: a day at the beach...

Some storm out at sea has unteathered ruffled clumps of bladderwrack and slippery sheets of some laver-like seaweed, and offered them up in these Jersey waves. We catch them up, and have a full slippery handful by the time we head back up the beach.

.Bladderwrack.

Prime ingrediant in my Mermaid detoxifying bath, it is a powerful purifying agent,

I know better than to take these indoors, and spread them to dry on the shelf along the wall of the bulkhead, where soon, as I suspected, many tiny creatures crawl out of them. They dry up so readily,

and just as readily rehydrate when the neighbor unsuspectingly turns on their sprinkler system.

I rationaliuze that they needed a fresh-water rinse, and  take them home, where I spread them on newspaper-covered screens, in the blazing sun.  Something about them attracts flies (UGH!) so I end up protecting them by sandwhiching them between an old black ckalk-board and a scavenged window-screen.

Drying for two days of this heat, they finally crunch with a satifying snap. I pour them into a paper bag and label them: Bladderwrck 1sts. Ocean City 2011. and I suppose I will have to change my labels for Mermaid Deep Cleansing Bath. New Jersey Bladderwrck certainly doesn't sound as good as Maine.

Maine is my next get-away destination...

The Herb Garden at our Beautious CSA Farm



Elecampane, a cough remedy, and Bergamot, which flavors Earl Grey



Elecampane
Roots of this stately giant make a soothing and restorative cough syrup.

Formerly a flavoring to British
sugar cakes
and used as a candied treat,
 with

medicinal benefits.


yellow Calendula blossoms in the foreground with Bergamot behind.
You've got to love a garden with Stinging nettles (front, right!!)

Stinging nettles (Urtica dioica) are an aptly named introduction from Europe, where it has a long history of being used for tea, soup, beer, a variety of medicinal uses (David Hoffmann says "When in doubt, use nettles.")  The 'stinging' chemicals dissapate on drying, or when cooked, so one only has to harvest it carefully to make use of its mineral-rich bounty. It is so rich it is said to create a rich loamy soil where it grows, and for that reason is left in small amounts in biodynamic orchards and gardens. A good companion, nettles can increase the essential oil content of its neighbors: mints have beens increased by over %10. 

I carefully work around it, heightened vigilance, while I gather the nearby Calendula.  These I clip with 5" stems that will be strung into golden garlands with a needle and thread to dry.  If you bundle them (here in Pennsylvania), they tend to mold, and I can feel the sticky resinousness as I work with them.  Once dried, these will make potent but gentle skin remedies --strongly healing but gentle enough for babies!




Its actually Holy Basil...fragrant Tulsi in a wide raised bed.
I gather enough for 3 hanging bundles and a jar of fresh tincture.



Dill looking like a burst of fireworks

Midsummer in my herbal fiefdom

Although I eventually expect to be doing some writing here IN THE STILLROOM,
( to add directions and recipes and the like;)
I have such a backlog of images that I will begin with these, a little tour of my herbal feifdom in smalltown Pennsylvania.

 Although in the past I have grown and managed extensive gardens, I am now confined to a shady side/ back yard, and what I can sneak into the sunny "Butterfly Garden" that I've purloined from the Administration building next door. These constraints have led me to rely on the essentials, and here I include lavender, echinacea, lemon balm, and Queen Anne's lace, thriving in the sun.  These do not seem to mind domestication, and, in the case of the lavender, require a little fussing over and appropriate species selection to grow successfully here (limey good drainage& no mulch)...

In other cases, like St John's wort, the plants must be coaxed gently into the garden, and may appear and disappear in different spots over the years, coming and going as they will.

The lavander and this bit of chamomile wait to be laid out on screens in the stillroom

 -- these are fashioned out of window screens and rope,and hang from the rafters over the wood stove.

(When I figure out how to turn images sideways, I'll show you)

Because the lavander essential oil is present in the sepals, it can be harvested to some effect after the height of the blooming season, though it is always lovely to catch the intense purple of the flowers,esp if the harvest will be seen. I do not bother to bundle the lavander, but lay it out in straight rows, then pile it into brown paper bags for storage. Remember, label everything with contents and date.  These are Grappenhall 1sts : 2011.



I left about a third of the blossoms for the bees...



Blossoms of St John's Wort in Olive oil begin to turn red after a day or two in the sun.

Known recently more for its internal use as an anti-depressant (the tincture is good for SSAD and is the essence of sunniness) this red infused oil was anciently used externally for serious burns and deep nerve damage.This one volunteered in my side lawn --and was only noticed because we were So Late in our mowing!) -- fully two years after I'd had one in a nearby garden bed. So...I build this bed around it, and have used its blooming to time my foray into the hedgerows in search of some wild specimens.

 I try to only harvest the blooms, as the seed capsules (unlike lavender) do not hold the hypericins and pseudu-hypericins that produce some of St John's wort actions. 

Mid Summer

The fulling moon in July brings the St Johns Wort into bloom late.

St Johns Wort, domesticated