Recipes
If I were a plant, I would be this particular plant. Not just a general Rose, but wild New Mexico Rose growing on the lush banks of the Gila’s riparian forest. Not only because the flower is exquisitely, delicately beautiful but because the Wild Rose is tough and tenacious, living through flash floods, long droughts and even cattle grazing. She [...]
Sweet Medicine:
An Overview of Honeyed Healing and Sensory Delight
The taste of a drop of rich wildflower honey, a lick of peach elixir or a sip of spice infused cordial is sensual, comforting and ecstatic all at once. Humans crave and love all things sweet, and while it’s clear that this is the taste most easily overdone and abused, it still retains [...]
Dispelling the Myth: Cherry Leaf Tea
Open the herbal book nearest to you, pretty much ANY herb book. Find the section on wild cherry or chokecherry, if there is one. Now check out the contradictions or warnings. It will almost certainly command you in very authoritative tones to NEVER EVER, NOT EVER consume cherry leaves or YOU WILL SURELY DIE. Poisonous, toxic, [...]
Elder Mother Immune Elixir
I don’t find the idea of magic bullets to be very effective in healing, and find that the most successful therapy always originates in tailoring the treatment to the individual person and situation. For this reason, you’ll rarely see/hear me recommending a set formula or list of herbs for any given diagnosis. In fact, my answer is [...]
There’s nothing like breathing in the richness of the forest while waking up to the beauty all around us. Witnessing dawn erupting in shades of magenta and gold over the horizon while immersed in the taste of the pine trees and oak forest is an incomparable experience that even the most hardcore coffee junkies should take a morning to [...]
Rich, Sweet & Wild: Acorn and Pine Nut Infused Butter
Most of my readers well know my fondness for the sweet, rich taste of New Mexico’s wild acorn. This smooth dark nut from the evergreen woodlands of the Southwest’s middle mountain ecology is often prolific and a great favorite of local wildlife. And with good reason, as this little nutrient powerhouse is [...]
Summer’s Spice: Beebalm Flower Infused Honey
It won’t be long now until the first brilliant purple flowers of Beebalm explode into bloom here in the Canyon. Locals call this gorgeous wildflower either Oregano de la Sierra or just Wild Oregano. Because yep, it tastes spicy and rather Oregano-like. The botanical name of this particular species is a bit long, being [...]
