China Bayles' Book of Days (58 page)

Today is the day we’ve all been waiting for: National Frappe Day! It’s also National Flower Day: In 1986, the rose became the national flower of the United States.

Herbal Frappes

Frappes, frozen fruit desserts, fruit shakes, smoothies—whatever you choose to call them, these concoctions are marvelous. And they’re even nicer when they’re flavored with your favorite herb. These recipes make one serving.

GINGER-PEACHY BREAKFAST FRAPPE

Ginger is valued in Eastern cultures as a metabolism booster, while Western research shows that the herb stimulates the digestive process, prevents nausea, and relieves cold symptoms. Start your day with a ginger-peachy frappe. Pour half a cup of boiling water over a one-inch piece of fresh ginger root (peeled and crushed) and let steep for five minutes. Strain and stir in 2-3 tablespoons of honey to make a syrup. Refrigerate. At breakfast time, place one peeled, pitted, chopped peach and one sliced banana in a blender and whir. Add the syrup and process until smooth. Delish!

LUNCHTIME VANILLA POWER FRAPPE

Protein powder (available in groceries) is a good basis for meal-substitute frappes; flaxseed is a heart-healthy herb, and vanilla an all-time herbal flavoring favorite. For lunch on the run, blend together ½ cup ice water, 1 tablespoon flaxseed oil, 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract, ½ teaspoon cinnamon, ½ cup protein powder.

DINNERTIME BERRY-MINTY DESSERT FRAPPE

Made with soy milk, this frappe is good for your bones. Tasty, too! In a blender, combine 1 cup soy milk, 1 teaspoon sugar, 1 cup fresh strawberries, ¼ teaspoon mint flavoring extract, 4 ice cubes. Blend until thick and foamy. Garnish with mint sprig.

BEDTIME BANANA-YOGURT FRAPPE

Researchers tell us Calcium can help you go to sleep and lemon verbena has a sweetly sedative effect. For a bedtime frappe, try this calcium-rich treat:

¾ cup yogurt (plain or fruit-flavored)
¾ cup milk
½ cup sliced banana
1 tablespoon lemon verbena
1 tablespoon honey (optional)

Combine all ingredients in blender and process until smooth. Dust with nutmeg.

Learn how to make other frappes:

Smoothies, Shakes, and Frappes: 750 Refreshing, Revitalizing, and Nourishing Drinks,
by Sally Ann Berk

If you pull up your kale today and dirt clings to the roots, good fortune lies ahead.

—GARDEN LORE

OCTOBER 9

Pomegranates are in season now.

Celebrating the Pomegranate

The pomegranate is one of the earliest cultivated fruits, planted in Northern Iran or Turkey between 4000 BCE and 3000 BCE. The first archaeological evidence is found in Jericho, dating from around 3000 BCE. An important food, it has played many other roles in various cultures. In China, the pomegranate with its numerous seeds symbolizes fertility, posterity, and royalty, while in Hebraic tradition, it represents fullness and confidence—again, because of the many seeds. (In Jewish lore, the pomegranate is said to contain 613 seeds.) Medicinally, the seeds were used by the Greeks and Romans as a vermifuge (to remove intestinal parasites), the rind treated complaints that had to do with the blood, such as menstruation or hemorrhage; and the leaves and rind were used as a poultice for ulcers and eye ailments. In Sri Lanka, the flowers made a red dye; in Morocco, the bark, used in tanning, gave Moroccan leather its distinctive yellow hue. The rind was an ingredient in ink, and throughout the Middle East, the plant was used in needlework and architectural design to symbolize abundance. And some scholars say that the fruit was the original “apple” from the Tree of Knowledge.

POMEGRANATE MUFFINS

2 cups flour
cup sugar, plus 2 teaspoons for sprinkling

1 tablespoon baking powder
¼ cup minced candied ginger
1 tablespoons grated orange peel
1½ cups pomegranate arils and seeds
(the yield of 2 medium pomegranates)
1 cup milk
1 egg
¼ cup butter or margarine, melted and cooled
½ teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 400°. Place paper cups in a 12-cup muffin pan. In a large mixing bowl, combine dry ingredients. Stir in ginger, orange peel, and pomegranate seeds. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients. In a small bowl, combine milk, egg, and butter or margarine. Pour into the well and stir with a fork until just blended. Spoon into muffin cups and bake 12-14 minutes. Sprinkle tops with sugar. Serve warm.

To seed a pomegranate
: Cut off the blossom end of the pomegranate and cut the fruit into sections. Soak the sections for 5-10 minutes in a large bowl of water. Working in the water, pull out the arils (juice sacs) with your fingers. Strain out the water. (Beware: pomegranate juice stains—permanently.)

More Reading:

Pomegranates,
by Ann Kleinberg

OCTOBER 10

Columbus Day is celebrated on the second Monday of October.

We found a man in a canoe going from Santa Maria to Fernandia. He had with him some dried leaves which are in high value among them, for a quantity of it was brought to me at San Salvador.

—CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, JOURNAL, OCTOBER 15, 1492

Tobacco

While minor quantities of nicotine may be found in some Old World plants (belladonna and
Nicotiana africana
), the habitual use of
Nicotiana tabacum
began in the Americas and was widespread by the first century CE. Rodrigo de Jerez, exploring Cuba, adopted the natives’ smoking habit. Back home in Spain, however, his neighbors were so terrified by the smoke coming out of his mouth and nose that the local Inquisitor sentenced him to seven years in jail. By the time de Jerez got out, everyone in Spain was smoking, and tobacco was on its way to becoming one of the most prized herbs in history.

The dried leaves of tobacco were smoked for the feeling of well-being. But it was the herb’s medical properties that were most often touted. It was claimed to be a panacea, especially effective in the treatment of headaches, toothache, worms, bad breath, lockjaw, and cancer. In 1603 in England, the physicians wrote an urgent letter to King James I, complaining that the drug was being used without a prescription; the king promptly levied a large import duty on tobacco imports. A few years later, though, Sir Frances Bacon wrote that more people than ever were smoking, and that it was next to impossible to quit. And in the American colonies, where a would-be husband was required to fork over 120 pounds of tobacco for his chosen wife’s passage, tobacco rapidly became the monetary standard. It helped to finance the American Revolution, subsidized the practice of slavery, and contributed enormously to the new country’s growing wealth.

It wasn’t until the 1950s that the significant health risks of tobacco consumption were officially recognized. The first tobacco lawsuit, filed by a man who lost his larynx to cancer, was won in 1962; the first secondhand smoke suit was won in 1976. In 1995, the FDA finally declared nicotine a drug.

More Reading:

Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization,
by Iain Gately

Tobaco is a remedy for the Tooth-ache, if the Teeth and Gumbs be rubbed with a linnen Cloth dipp’t in the juice, and afterward a round ball of the leaves laid unto the place.

—JOHN GERARD, HERBAL, 1597

OCTOBER 11

Culinary note: To cook chili, you have to know how to spell. Chiles are peppers, ranging in temperature from mild to incendiary. Chili is a thick stew made with meat, peppers, herbs, sometimes tomatoes, and (if you live north of the Red River) beans. If you live in Springfield, Illinois, or other northern or eastern locations, you might spell chili with two l’s: chilli. Texans never spell chili with beans, unless they’re looking for a fight.

—CHILE DEATH: A CHINA BAYLES MYSTERY

Chiles and Chili

Tobacco wasn’t the only thing Columbus exported from the New World, of course. Most people would probably agree that the chile pepper has contributed a great deal more than tobacco to human civilization. While it’s not official, chili has to rank right up there with ballpark hotdogs and movie popcorn as the Great American Dish. And yes, where I grew up, the word is spelled
chilli
and the pot is full of beans. Red beans. Red kidney beans.

China’s favorite chili recipe is named for the Pedernales River (that’s pronounced
Purd-nal’-is,
folks), which flows through President Lyndon Johnson’s Texas ranch. This no-frills, no-fuss chili was said to be Johnson’s favorite, and the recipe comes from a card Mrs. Johnson used to hand out. “It has been almost as popular as the government pamphlet on the care and feeding of children,” she once remarked. You will notice that there are no beans.

PEDERNALES CHILI

4 pounds ground lean beef
1 large onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon ground oregano
1 teaspoon ground cumin
3 tablespoons chili powder
2 cans tomatoes
2 cups hot water
salt to taste

Brown ground beef in heavy iron skillet. Add onion and garlic and cook 4-5 minutes. Add remaining ingredients and simmer one hour. When cool, skim fat. Better on the second day, when the flavors have mellowed.

Discover the secrets of chili cookery:

The Ultimate Chili Book: Connoisseur’s Guide to Gourmet Recipes and the Perfect Four-Alarm Bowl
, by Christopher B. O’Hara

I once absent-mindedly ordered Three Mile Island dressing in a restaurant and, with great presence of mind, they brought Thousand Island Dressing and a bottle of chili sauce.

—TERRY PRATCHETT, BRITISH SATIRIST

OCTOBER 12

But those which perfume the Aire most delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but being Trodden upon and Crushed, are Three: That is, Burnet, Wilde-Time, and Water-Mints. Therefore you are to set whole Allies of them, to have the Pleasure, when you walke or tread.

—FRANCIS BACON

Salad Burnet

If you haven’t yet set out Bacon’s fragrant Allies—burnet, thyme, and mint—now is the time. Mint and thyme are most easily started from cuttings and transplants, but you can sow the seeds of salad burnet (
Sanguisorba minor
) seeds now, in full sun and well-drained soil, for harvesting in early spring. If you already have burnet in your garden, you’re probably using it regularly, now that the weather is cooler. The pretty, cucumber-flavored young leaves, lacy and delicate-looking, are the most delicious now and in early spring, perfect for salads, as its name suggests. Burnet also lends an interesting flavor to vinegars, sauces, salad dressings, and creamy soups. Added to a pitcher of iced punch, the leaves are decorative and cooling.

Like its larger medicinal cousin (
Sanguisorba officinalis
), salad burnet has been used for more than two thousand years, primarily as an astringent.
Sanguisorba
means “blood-absorbing,” so called for the plant’s ability to contract small blood vessels. Roman soldiers drank burnet tea before battle, hoping it might reduce bleeding if they were wounded; soldiers in the American Revolution drank New Jersey tea (
Ceanothus americanus
) for a similar purpose. Burnet was also used (with some two dozen other herbs) in wine and vinegar as an deterrent to plague infections.

BURNET VINEGAR

1 cup burnet leaves, packed
2 cups white wine vinegar

Pack leaves into a clean jar and cover with vinegar. Put on a tight lid and set on a sunny shelf, turning frequently. Taste in two weeks. Continue steeping (if it’s not quite intense enough) or strain and rebottle. Not necessarily helpful in preventing plague, but super on salads.

A DILLY OF A BURNET BUTTER

½ pound unsalted butter
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
½ cup chopped burnet leaves
3 tablespoons minced fresh dill

Blend all ingredients thoroughly. Use on steamed vegetables, fish, or sandwiches.

To make water for washing hands at table: Boil sage, then strain the water and cool it until it is a little more than lukewarm. Or use chamomile, marjoram, or rosemary boiled with orange peel. Bay leaves are also good.