9 Familiar
Herbs & Spices
to Grow
and Use
THE HERB AND SPICE CABINET contains
a marvelous cornucopia of medicinal plants. Most people are unaware that the
herbs and spices they sprinkle on their food are renowned healing agents, respected
through the ages by manifold cultures. Almost every one of these common
culinary heroes makes wonderfully effective kitchen medicine. There’s been many
a time when I’ve been visiting friends or family and heard someone complain of
a cold or flu or headache. Though my hosts may not have a home apothecary
filled with medicinal herbs or an herb shop close by, I can confidently open their
spice cabinet and find in there what I need to make an effective herbal remedy.
People sometimes think I have some kind of special “magic,” but I’m just doing
what our ancestors have always done.
Though we tend to associate the flavor of certain herbs with certain
foods — basil with tomatoes, cloves with meat, horseradish with hearty meat
dishes — often these pairings came about for medicinal reasons, not flavor.
Basil aids with the digestion of the acids in tomatoes; cloves and other spices
helped preserve meat in prerefrigeration days; and horseradish stimulates
sluggish digestion and aids in the digestion of fatty foods. Indeed, in this
way many medicinal plants have entered into the household via the kitchen door,
ushered in by the Mistress of Spices, their healing spirits camouflaged in culinary
garb.
WHEN IS AN HERB MEDICINE AND NOT FOOD?
There’s
wisdom in that old adage Let food be your medicine and medicine your food. Truly, it’s the diet and lifestyle choices we make
on a daily basis that most affect our long-term health and well-being. It’s odd
that health care becomes an issue only when health is absent, and medicine is deemed effective only if it’s so potent that the possible side effects are often as serious as the initial
diagnosis. Health care really makes more sense if we care enough about our health
to attend to it on a regular basis, and medicine makes more sense if it’s
strong enough to be effective but still kind to our bodies. Always start with
the most effective but least harmful remedy. Isn’t the healer’s primary creed First, do no harm?
As you’ll learn in this
chapter, many of the herbs, spices, and foods you eat daily are considered
medicines. So what’s the difference between a medicine and a food? The difference
lies primarily in the dose, duration, and preparation. For instance, a cup of
fresh-juiced carrot, beet, and dandelion root with ginger is a delicious
pickme-up tonic. Drinking a cup of this tonic now and then is going to make
anyone feel energized. But for this same tonic to be an effective medicine used to treat a specific condition, such as liver congestion, poor
digestion, and/or recurring skin problems, you would need to drink 2 to
3 cups of this blend daily for 2 to
3 weeks. The occasional cup of ginger tea is
delicious and may even be helpful for relieving menstrual cramps. But to be used
medicinally, with effective and lasting results, a woman would need to drink
small amounts of it throughout the days of her menstrual cycle. Garlic used occasionally
in your cooking may help support overall heart health, but to lower cholesterol
and treat a circulatory condition, you’d need to take a specific amount of
garlic on a regular basis.
In this way, dosage, duration,
and preparation morph a culinary herb into a powerful medicinal remedy.
A combination of garlic, parsley, and
fresh ginger morphs from food to medicine as a result
of how it’s prepared and the dosage amount.
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