🌶Your Tasty Food Is Potent Medicine!

It's time we shift our perspective and see our kitchens in a new light. 🍂 In today's episode, we're exploring how the herbs and spices in our holiday dishes are not just for flavor, but are powerful medicines hiding in plain sight. 🥧

Rosemary, sage, thyme, and more - these aren't just ingredients, they're potent medicine, right inside your kitchen, right now. Discover their medicinal secrets and how they can transform your well-being. 

Join me as we learn to look at our food as medicine, empowering ourselves with each meal. It's time to embrace the natural healing powers that have been right under our noses all along!

Tune in and transform your kitchen into a source of healing. Catch all the herbal insights through this link. Let's make our health journey delicious and empowering!

🌼Wondering what medicinal herbs you should grow for your family?
Grab this guide, Medicinal Herbs Every Mom Must Know & Grow! 
You'll learn how to grow them, and how you can use them. Time to start diggin' in the dirt momma!

🍄Medicinal mushrooms have the power to completely transform your health, and our planet. But, quality does matter when you're seeking these fungi as medicine, and unfortunately, much of what's on the market today, isn't such great quality.  But, WholeSun Wellness is the best of the best out there. Try a tin of their Mycolites or any of their other top quality mushroom products here.

Transcript

Hello, hello, hello. And if you are in the United States, a very, very happy Thanksgiving to you. If you're not in the United States, no worries, there's still so much to be grateful for despite all the challenging times in our world today. I still think it's so important to focus on gratitude, like what do you have to be thankful for? I'm thankful that you're listening to this podcast and that you are fascinated by herbal medicine like I am. Because that's how we're going to make herbalism spread like wildflowers. And that is so beautiful. So thank you, thank you for tuning in to this episode of the herbalist path. And since it is Thanksgiving here in the States, and we're literally prepping all this food, I took a little break to come record this podcast for you. But when we're prepping all of that food, so many of us forget how much incredible medicine is in this very same food. Like all those delicious herbs and spices that we're using to make our food tastes even better. That's straight medicine. It's potent. It's powerful. It's tasty, and it's delicious medicine. So that's what I want to talk about with you today. Just a quick rundown of some of the herbs you might be using and your traditional feasts and meals and like what they can do for the human body and why you may want to start looking at the kitchen cabinet of your as a whole new wondrous place. Maybe a medicine cabinet even I mean, of course we all say food is medicine. And that's so true, too, right? If we're not eating healthy and good foods for our body, then we're gonna have a lot of problems. But still, that being said, a lot of the culinary herbs that we use to flavor our foods can actually help improve our health in dramatic ways as well. And one of my favorites, I love oh so much. And I drink darn near every single day, at least I really did when I ran by product line, because I made a tea with it. And the tea was called where's my mind and it was for mental clarity and focus. And this special little culinary herb was a feature ingredient in it because it happens to bring circulation up to the brain and improve the memory and just help you be able to focus better, and it's delicious. If you haven't guessed it yet, it's rosemary. So Rosemary is magnificent. I could say that about all these herbs that right. It's actually been used as medicine since 500 BCE, the Greeks and the Romans used it regularly. And we still use it today. It was even sometimes put on the graves of their dead people loved ones as just a symbol of remembrance of them. When I was going through clinical herbs school, I would always take a little sprig of rosemary, like we'd have really long weekends where we were like in class eight or nine hours a day. And then we'd have like a little walk lunch break and I would take a walk around the neighborhood in Portland, Oregon. And there was always like, every yard had a giant Rosemary shrubbery. So I just grabbed a little sprig and stuff it behind my ear for the rest of class so I could stay attentive and alert and I just love it for that. And it's so delicious, too. It's also going to be really, really nice for you if you are really bloated or just feeling like holy moly, I ate so much food what in the world that I do to myself, Rosemary's what's called a carminative. So it's going to help to ease that gassiness and that bloating and that stuck kind of feeling as well. And it's also known to lift the mood a bit so any of you that are like me and when these days get shorter, you get a little bummed out or some of you may get even more than bummed out. While you might benefit from having some rosemary in your life, you can have it as a tea or a tincture. And it really can just uplift the spirits and really help those that have just depression or really low moods or even deal with anxiety. So, rosemary, it's a whole lot more than just tasty food. Right. So the next one I figured we talk about because it's one of my favorites because I live stuffing at Thanksgiving time. And it's always a sage stuffing, right, like this beautiful, beautiful herb is native to the Mediterranean. And it has certainly been used as medicine for 1000s of years as well. And it has so many fantastic medicinal properties to it, other than just making my stuffing absolutely amazing. Like it's a wonderful carminative also, right, so carminative, meaning that it's going to help ease the gassiness and the bloating and the tummy upset as well. It's an antimicrobial, so it can do a really nice job of fighting off viral or bacterial or fungal infections even. And it's really, really helpful for sore throat. If you have never tried doing like a sage sore throat gargle or something like that, you really, really should, it is very, very helpful. And usually something that's just readily available, right, you probably have it on your shelf, it's really easy to grow in your garden. All of that great stuff is so, so helpful, right? We're actually doing a whole like, lesson tomorrow, like I'm recording this on Tuesday before Thanksgiving. And tomorrow inside of apothecary mama, we're doing a deep dive lesson on the history of all of these culinary herbs and how they've been used as medicine because it's, it's so fascinating to think about that, right? Our world today has become so disconnected with our plant medicine. But this is the same stuff that your ancestors were using as medicine for 1000s and 1000s of years. And it's so easy to grow. It's so abundant, we don't have to always get so fancy with our herbal medicines and remedies. Like, you don't have to go out and buy everything right now you probably have everything we're talking about in today's show. And all of it can be used as really, really potent medicine. So I know I talked about that a lot. If you've listened to my show a bunch. I think it's just really important to connect with that history. And then we're going to do like a little comparison of like, what it was used for what it's commonly used for today, and all that stuff. And yes, I think it's fun stuff. But of course, I am an herb nerd. Okay, so the other Well, one of the other herbs I wanted to talk about is time you get a time to hang out with me. I hope so because time is really potent medicine too, it's actually really, really cool to know that time has a couple of constituents in it. One of them is carvacrol. One of them is thymol. Both of these ingredients are very strong anti microbials. And you'll actually see thymol and things like toothpaste or Listerine mouthwash or Vicks Vapor Rub or many, many medical disinfectants and like the list goes on and on and on. They're even in some like pesticides and bug sprays and things like that. That are they're just extracting this little bitty constituent of this simple, easy to grow plant and you know, packaging it in a fancy bottle and whatnot. When we can just like drink some time tea or make some time soup or do a time herbal steam, right? Like what are we what are we doing? Why are we not doing these things more often?
Times actually our herb of the month inside of the kids safe herb Club, which if you haven't heard about that, it's pretty cool. You should hop in. Yes, it's called the kid safe ARB club. But all the herbs that we talk about in there are also wonderful for adults. And I teach you like some basic Botany and Plant ID skills and safety measures for herbalism. And there's even a wildcrafting lesson in there. And then each month we study one herb in depth where you learn how to grow it you learn how to identify it, how to harvest it ways you can make medicine with it. ways you can apply it as medicine in your home way beyond just the like, you know, every herb has that one claim to fame and everybody forgets that it can do other things. But I guarantee you once you start to learn how to look at an herb and recognize that it can do 10 or 20 Different things for people in your family to help heal them or help them feel better in one way or another. You are going to feel like I used the word empowerment but Hot diggity dog it's only because I hear from my students all the time, like, wow, the level of empowerment I have, because I now know how to heal my family. Anyways. So bucks can save our club join me, it's not just for kids. But it is definitely we do talk about kids and we talk about keeping them safe and we do this deep dive herbal study. It's seven bucks a month. Come join me it's so much fun. We also do a live class every month called herbal show and tell where everybody shares what they learned about that particular herb of the month. It's fun. It's about the time and time all you know it is used as a breath freshener. That's why it's in Listerine it is also really, really fantastic for respiratory infections. So if you had maybe a case of laryngitis or something like that you could really benefit from doing a time gargle. If you are really bloated and just having very sluggish digestion and you're like, why are things not moving through my body? You may want to have a bit of time. So like, are you getting this like how lucky we are that these are the herbs we're cooking these giant feasts with? Right? There's a reason for that. And all of these herbs are also used as preservatives for meats way back in the day. There are so many incredible benefits. That's why probably why all of our meats became so delicious, right? Okay, so those are some of my favorites rose conveyor, rosemary, sage thyme. And I want to talk about one more of the like spicy or more savory herbs and that's black pepper. Yeah, black pepper, the same stuff that you you know, your server comes up and says would you like fresh, fresh cracked pepper on your salad, I highly encourage you to say yes every single time and because it's going to stimulate your tastebuds right which is going to stimulate more of your digestive juices to flow and support the liver and improve your overall detoxification process. So it's going to help you break down your fats, it's going to help you break down proteins, it's also going to help your body to be able to uptake all the other vitamins and minerals and nutrients that are in your foods on that solid all those beautiful greens like you're just going to up that nutritive value so much it's it's really amazing. So I highly recommend using more black pepper on your foods because it's tasty and it's so good. And I know I have talked about like all the savory stuff so let me just quickly touch on some of the stuff that goes into our sweet treats right? Because once we get through things giving it is still the holiday season and everybody's making cookies and pies and cakes and candy canes and all the things so let's talk about that right let's talk about cinnamon because it's so yummy Lemme lemme I love cinnamon what I love to recognize about cinnamon one it's native to Sri Lanka or and and southwest India Asia area and it's really cool to think about cinnamon because if you've seen like the beautiful cinnamon sticks or cinnamon quills Is there a tech technical name is cool because that's bark from a cinnamon tree and there are these beautiful farmers are working their hands and fingers so hard to harvest that bark for us to eat tons of pumpkin pie and apple pie and chai tea and what have you it's so good and my my phone just started playing music and it's not supposed to
yeah so anyways pardon that interruption stop I don't want that music God then disconnect disconnect you're trying to disconnect go to Bluetooth
Okay, sorry about that. So my partner's upstairs prepping our dinner for tonight and getting some things together for us to take off down to my mom's for the holiday anyway to listen to some music and apparently his phone is connected to my speaker down in my office. So anyways, cinnamon right I talked about it. The quills are harvested from these beautiful farmers and I just think it's so beautiful to think about it coming off of a tree and these people working so hard for us to have so much yummy food right There's actually over 100 different varieties of cinnamon to choose from. So that gets pretty overwhelming. The cinnamomum Cassia or Cassia cinnamon is a bit more spicy, it's going to be a bit more pungent and this is the one we're going to use in more savory dishes when cooking, if you're going to make a curry with it, that's the one you're going to use more often than not. And then they've got Ceylon cinnamon or cinnamomum verum Veeram. I'm not sure exactly. It's kind of Potato Potato for me a Latin word sometimes. But that's what we're going to be putting in our pies and our pumpkin spice latte and our cookies and all that good stuff. Our gingerbread men, you name it. That's the Ceylon cinnamon, and both are pretty darn similar medicinally so they are also really wonderful for digestion that can be really helpful for kiddos with a fever. They also can be really, really nice to ease gassiness and bloating and just cramping in the stomach. It can be helpful to if somebody has a case of diarrhea. So the thing with the digestive purposes for for cinnamon is that some people are really sensitive to it. It is a very warm herb, and it can cause aggravation for some people. Whereas for others it can provide really great relief and it's also an astringent and a smooth muscle, anti spasmodic, so it's going to like if somebody's got diarrhea and they're cramping and ageing they may really benefit from some cinnamon tea so I also love cinnamon because it helps to like lower sugar cravings, despite us like packing it into all these sugary treats and it can help to regulate blood sugar levels for people to so cinnamon I love it another one I love oh so much is peppermint it's delicious right think about all those candy canes like they were originally made with peppermint now they're made with who knows what kind of nastiness in there but I love pepper remember all the reasons especially like during this time of year Oh
rose please cut that out. So, another one I want to talk about is peppermint Neeraj. I am recording a podcast
so another herb that I love so much during the holiday season that is used in all the things is peppermint like our candy canes, all those sweet little treats, they're derived from mint, obviously right but they've added a bunch of sugary nasty, syrupy stuff that we don't really need into our in our bodies but mint I love also during this time of year, because again it can get dark and kind of sad and depressing for people and mint can just lift you up right? I mean think about it. When you smell something minty fresh, you're instantly like a little more alive or you have some pep in your step and you are just feeling really really good. I love that about it and I need that during the wintertime like please give me that cool brisk, fresh alive and feeling that I get also from slashing through the snow but that's a whole whole nother ballgame. But peppermint is also going to be great because it is another one that's fantastic for our digestive system. It helps to alleviate nausea. It helps with gassiness and bloating and tummy upset. It has some very gentle antiviral properties while also being a diuretic so it can really be quite supportive for our kiddos during times of cold and flu. And again it is straight, delicious. So that is what I got for you. There are so many other herbs that you can add to your foods that are absolutely medicine. If you don't already have my kitchen cabinet cures guide I go over like 10 of them that are specific specific for cold and flu season. If you want to dive deeper on these things, I definitely do deeper lessons inside of apothecary mama. And other than that, I really truly hope that you have the most amazing, beautiful, peaceful some time of relaxation holiday weekend and if you learn something new in this episode, I would absolutely love to hear about it. Please please please head on over to iTunes and give me a review for this podcast so that they will let this podcast be heard by the masses. And until next time, take care of yourself. Take care of your loved ones and thanks for being here and making herbalism spread like wildflowers. Bye
Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of the herbalist path. Being on this journey with you is absolutely incredible. If you dig this episode, please leave me a review on your favorite podcast player and share it with your friends so that together we can make our herbalism hashtag spread like wild flowers. On another note, I must mention that while I know you're getting some good info here, it's important to remember that this podcast is purely for entertainment and educational purposes and is not intended to be a substitute for medical treatment. While the information in this podcast is absolutely relevant. Herbs were differently for each person and each condition. That's why I recommend you work with a qualified practitioner, whether that be another herbalist or naturopath or your doctor. So thank you again. I am truly honored that you're tuning into these episodes and on the path with me to make sure that there's an herbalist in every home again, don't forget to share this episode with your friends so that we can make herbalism hashtag spread like wild flower