Shit hits fan - the rant.

This is the Cheneaux Dam, on the Ottawa river, just downstream from us. Believe it or not, there is only one gate open, the one in the background, at the far end of the bridge. This is not a normal spring.

Up and down the Ottawa river - and all its tributaries - the twice as much as normal snowfall of the past winter is swelling rivers to unprecedented levels. Two years ago, we had a "100 year" flood. This is much, much worse.

Using fresh stinging nettles in the kitchen .. and elsewhere

Allow me, please, to open with a small rant -

You'd think I would be pleased to hear that stinging nettles are now commercially available at farmers' markets and even some 'foodie' outlets and yeah, it is 'great', in a way.

But deep down, I'm kinda saddened to hear it.

Here's why: The true nourishment of nettles, their Medicine, their meaning in the grander scheme of things, is to be found in the gathering. 

It's in the hunt.

It's in the way the heartbeat quickens just a little when we discern just the right shade of green (with a blush of red or purple when they're really young) nestled amongst the golds and browns of the old grasses of last year. It's in the pink cheeks from the biting wind and spitting rain of a spring day, and the squelch of the still wet ground we likely have to cross to get to where nettles are wont to be the most plentiful. The best nettles, in my neck of the woods at least, always seem to be the least accessible ones.

It's in the first stings that bring cold benumbed fingers back to fiery life.

It's in their wildness, their downright orneriness. That orneriness is matched by our own as we're so willing, eager even, to set comfort aside just for a taste of something so genuinely fresh after a winter of imported food.

That's nettles.

But nettles aren't (alas) that for everyone, for some they're just a novel - and very, very nutritious -vegetable that can be a little daunting to deal with in the kitchen. It's not yet nettle season where I live - it's a good month away yet - but I've already heard from folks in warmer climes that they've got themselves a bag or two from the market and they don't quite know how to deal with them. Can I help? Sure, I'll be glad to.

Now that my little rant is (mostly, but I'm not guaranteeing completely) out of the way, read on for how I've learned to prep and cook nettles.

The prune rant.

An advertisement along the side of my email says "Healthy meals delivered - as low as $4.95 a meal."

Um, no ..

How fucking stupid are people, anyway? Excuses, excuses.

"but I'm too busy to shop/cook/pay attention to the fact that I have become a fucking mindless sheep .."

Tigers don't make good house pets

(Wherein she starts out on a philosophical bent, then gets pretty real about horsetail herb and does a little pep talk at the end)


There's a 'trend', you may have heard of it, known as 'rewilding'. It seemed to come out of something like the same place as the paleo movement; from the idea that we're in an evolutionary mismatch, both with our food and our disconnection from 'nature' (whatever that means) .. and so in one way or another people are reaching for ways to re-establish that connection, or eat and live in ways that are more evolutionarily appropriate. (It's been a 'thing' forever, of course, just by different names.) I'm on the tail end of that hippie, back to the land generation so I've lived that way a bit, and my somewhat older husband, a bit more (he actually lived on a commune in the wilds of British Columbia for a while in the 60's!).

The funny thing is that when people really do put themselves into a position where they are 'living off the land' they discover what humans have known all along; that it's really fucking hard to do. From 'here' it looks noble and romantic, and I suppose we could say it is .. but it's life-threateningly difficult too. Not only that, but when done authentically, it can/will often suck out any and all energy that might have been used for other purposes beyond hardscrabble survival.

What you'll learn here - and what you won't (plus bonus rant)

I dunno if it's there's something up with the planets these days but I'm feeling particularly unencumbered by the need to treat anyone's feelings delicately right now.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still plenty smiley.

I'm just not in the mood to put up with falsehoods, excuses, wilful blindness or learned helplessness. In other words, the norms of society.

A course in every day miracles

(or, how to get the most out of my ramblings)


Judging by the stats for this blog (if you can believe them) and the emails from readers, we seem to have a few newcomers here.

That's led me to look through older posts on the blog with an eye to what has already been covered, and then back to the stats to see if those posts are being read. They're not, they're buried. So from time to time I think I'll link you back to them. For some of you this will be review, but if there is one thing I have learned it is that review is essential. I still do it, especially in winter, and even though as I read my old text books I can practically recite certain passages by heart, something I have forgotten or perhaps never quite absorbed will pop out at me.

One thing my readers know about my writing is that I tend to go off on tangents. They're useful things, those tangents, so I want you to pay attention to them. But sometimes they lead me astray and there are blanks in the posts that shouldn't be there.

Garbling the message

Herbalists use the word "garble" to describe the process of preparing plant material for use. Dictionaries call this definition "obsolete". (sigh)

To everyone else, to garble is to mix up words or ideas so badly that the original meaning or intent is obscured.

I can tell you, when it comes to all things herbal, the message out there on the internet is garbled in the second sense. Pretty badly, too.

Commercial break post that became a furious rant

(this is the not-ranty part)

Remember last year when I had tinctures and other wild crafted, home made products for sale?

I am so NOT going to do that this year. (Although I do have a few things left over, if you want to know what's still available, write me)

It's not that it wasn't successful. It's not that I didn't kinda sorta enjoy certain aspects of it.

It's just that it's so. not. me.

Messing about with wild grapes (with bonus mini-rant)

Down at the bottom of the yard where the land drops off abruptly to what we call the 'ravine', the wild grape vines go high up into the trees. In spring time the flowers on those vines emit the fragrance of heaven. Some years, like this year, a heavy frost wipes them out; but wild grapes are undaunted. They simply bloom again.

We feared it was but a tease, that second wave of heaven scent. The actual vineyards of the region were declaring disaster, surely the wild ones couldn't produce fruit if the coddled wine grapes couldn't, right? But when the birds started carousing in a particular tree a few days ago, Paul (my husband) (lover of all things grape) (and all around good guy) crashed that party - and he came back with favours!

Half a bucket-o-joy!

Much to our surprise, these wild grapes are not the usual tiny mouth-puckeringly sour variety that we usually find back there, but as near-as-dammit to concords as we've ever seen. A little smaller, mind you, and still somewhat puckery, but juicy, oh are they juicy!

Medical marijuana is NOT herbal medicine

It's just not.

Cannabis derived products look like herbal medicine to some, but that is simply because of the way herbalism itself has been twisted and corrupted. Cannabis derived products are drugs - but then so are most of the supplements sold these days - and so although I have nothing (much) against pot per se, I am increasingly outraged by the mainstream hoax surrounding it.

Echinacea

(Originally published here )

This plant is right up there with St.John'swort, in that together they take the top spots for the most misunderstood herbal medicines. And, to my mind, they're also the most bastardized, exploited and whored-out by Big Herb. But I digress, right in the first paragraph. Great start!

I've written and deleted and rewritten and redeleted today's post half a dozen times and there might well be a seventh as I try to find another way to write about my friend echinacea, or as I like to call her (or it, or them, which is it?), elk root. You've read all the propaganda. I have to go another way.

St John'swort, not an antidepressant. Well maybe sorta. But not how you think. And really it is SO much more.

(Originally published here

This will not be a discussion about brain chemicals, my brothers and sisters, because I'm pretty sure so narrow a worldview sets people up for depression in the first place. The idea that our responses to life can be reduced to chemical reactions and have nothing to do with us is dehumanizing. Drugs that treat so-called chemical imbalances are dehumanizing. Feeling dehumanized is depressing!

It's become a big con, of course, this whole brain chemistry racket. It's used to keep us in our places. The natural pain that is part of being mortal is medicalized into a disorder. The pain that stems from oppression is labeled mental illness. These types of pain, we're taught, are to be avoided or escaped.

Nettle tea rant

(Originally published 29 April 2015 here )

Under the surface, your writer is ... seething.

Yes! I'm angry. It's about one of those things I should expect, I should just shrug off. I should get over myself. But dammit to hell, it's just not right. It's morally wrong and it's downright dangerous and it pisses me off.

Superficially, this is about teabags.