China Bayles' Book of Days (66 page)

MAGGIE GARRETT’S FLOWERPOT HERB BREAD

2 packages dry yeast
¼ cup warm water
¼ cup sugar
1½ cups scalded milk, cooled
½ cup shortening, melted, cooled
2 large eggs, beaten
2 teaspoons salt
6-7 cups whole-wheat pastry flour, sifted
½ teaspoon basil
¾ teaspoon thyme
¾ teaspoon oregano
1 tablespoon fresh minced parsley

Soften yeast in warm water, with 1 tablespoon of the sugar. Mix milk, shortening, and beaten eggs. Stir in the remaining sugar, salt, eggs, and 2 cups of the flour. Mix well and cover with a damp cloth. Let rise in a warm place until bubbly (about 1 hour). Stir well, and add herbs. Mix in the rest of the flour to make a stiff dough. Knead on floured board until satiny and elastic. Place in greased bowl, cover with a damp cloth, and return to the warm place to rise until doubled in bulk (about 1 hour). Punch dough down, let rest for 10 minutes, and divide into 4-6 pieces (depending on the size of your pots). Place each piece in a pot, filling only half full. Cover with a damp cloth and let rise until the dough has filled the pots (about 45-50 minutes). Bake in 425° oven for 15 minutes, then lower the heat to 350°. Bake small pots an additional 5-10 minutes, larger pots 15-30. Turn out of the pot, return to the oven for a few minutes, then cool on a rack. (Maggie says to tell you that this bread is even better if it’s served with an herb butter!)

Bushels of breads with whole-grain flour:

Whole Grain Breads by Machine or Hand: 200 Delicious, Healthful, Simple Recipes
, by Beatrice Ojakangas

NOVEMBER 18

Our concern is that we not kill the goose that laid the golden egg. Ancient forests that gave us the yew may give us answers to medical questions we haven’t thought to ask.

—WENDELL WOOD, OREGON NATURAL RESOURCES COUNCIL

The Secret of the Yew Tree

Until the 1960s, the Pacific yew (
Taxus brevifolia
) was considered just another trash tree. The local Indian tribes knew better: Traditional healers brewed a decoction of the wood and bark to treat gastrointestinal and urinary ailments, made a poultice of the leaves to heal wounds, and used the leaves as a wash to promote health. But it wasn’t until the early 1960s that researchers for the National Cancer Institute reported that an extract made from the tree’s inner bark inhibited cell division, making it a potential cancer treatment. By the late 70s, they had isolated the anti-cancer compound: taxol. In 1989, clinical trials demonstrated success in the treatment of ovarian cancer; in 1993, it was approved by the FDA.

But the Pacific yew was soon in trouble. Six mature trees must be killed to produce enough of the compound to treat one patient. There are far more patients than there are trees, and the trees are protected under the Endangered Species Act. The choice pitted patients and physicians against those who worried that the tree would soon be extinct and the forest destroyed.

Luckily, scientists have found a viable alternative, which is now being used as the basis for synthetic derivatives. But the real question still confronts us. Ethnobotanists argue that wise gatherers and traditional healers know what plants have the capacity to heal. With their guidance, plants may direct us to new ways of healing that we will never discover in the pharmaceutical laboratory. But these healers, the plants, and even the forests are rapidly disappearing. Unless we act quickly to preserve them, they will be gone, and we will never learn the secrets that they once held—like the secret of the Pacific yew tree, which has now saved so many women’s lives.

More Reading:

Green Pharmacy: The History and Evolution of Western Herbal Medicine,
by Barbara Griggs

The Natural History of Medicinal Plants
, by Judith Sumner

The Indians’ botanical knowledge is disappearing even faster than the plants themselves. What we in the developed world call civilisation is rapidly encroaching on indigenous communities, just as it is encroaching on the plants, and native botanical lore is usually an early casualty. In only one generation, acculturation can lead to the disappearance of botanical knowledge acquired over millennia.

—RICHARD EVENS SCHULTES, DIRECTOR, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
BOTANICAL MUSEUM, 1994

NOVEMBER 19

Herbal Remedies to Make You Laugh

Yes, plant medicines (like yew-derived taxol) can be wonderful. But a great many of the herbal remedies that have been proposed over the centuries are pretty silly. Here are some of my favorites, collected over the years. They might not cure you, but maybe they’ll make you laugh—and laughter is a fine medicine.

• You need a ribbon for this one. “The dried root [of vervain], peeled, is known to be excellently good against all scrofulous and scorbutic habits of body, by being tied to the pit of the stomach by a piece of white ribband round the neck.” If that doesn’t work, trying putting the dried leaves into a black silk bag, and tying that around your neck.

• Be careful what you pick. The picking of dandelion flowers leads to bedwetting. The picking of red cam-pion leads to thunder. The picking of the cuckoo flower (also known as lady’s smock) will give you a headache. And for heaven’s sake, don’t bring any cow parsley into the house, because the snakes will follow it, or your mother will die, or both.

• Fumitory was thought to remove freckles, which led to this extravagant promise: “If you wish to be pure and holy, wash your face with fumitory.”

• Black hellebore is poisonous, but if your horse has a cough, you should poke a hole through his ear and put a piece of the root in it. He will be cured in 24 hours.

• To cure your rheumatism, put a potato in your pocket and carry it until it gets hard. It will draw the iron out of the blood, and it’s the iron that’s causing the stiffness. (This is supposed to work better if you steal the potato from your neighbor’s potato bin.)

• Nosebleed? “Houseleek bruised and laid upon the crown or seam of the head, stays bleeding at the nose very quickly.”

• And if you really want to get well, use garlic that has been planted on Good Friday, then boiled in sweet milk. “It will cure any disease in people, cattle, or fowl.”

More Reading:

The Oxford Dictionary of Plant-Lore
, by Roy Vickery

NOVEMBER 20

Stir-up Sunday occurs about this time.

Stir Up, We Beseech Thee

The last Sunday before Advent is known in England as Stir-Up Sunday. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (that font of all linguistic wisdom), this name came about because the Collect for this particular Sunday begins with the phrase: “Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people.” Stir-Up Sunday, the Oxford English Dictionary remarks, “is jocularly associated with the stirring of the Christmas mincemeat, which it was customary to begin making in that week.” Charles Kightly (in
The Perpetual Almanack of Folklore
) reports this popular parody:

Stir up, we beseech thee
The pudding in the pot
And when we do get home
We’ll eat it piping hot.

Kightly adds that Christmas puddings should always be stirred with a wooden spoon, clockwise, and that everyone should take a turn in order of seniority (age before beauty?).

So get out the wooden spoon, gather the family, and start stirring. In England, of course, Christmas puddings are always steamed, a practice that began in the days when few kitchens had ovens and people cooked over open fires. If you prefer to make your favorite American fruitcake (similar ingredients, but baked instead of steamed), be sure to include the traditional Christmas coin, which is supposed to bring wealth to the lucky recipient. (Remind everyone to look for it when they pick up their forks!)

Christmas fruitcakes make sweet presents for friends and family. Bake several (use tin cans in various sizes as baking containers), wrap them in muslin and ribbons, and attach a sprig of rosemary with your gift card.

More Reading:

Favorite Fruitcakes: Recipes, Legends, and Lore from the World’s Best Cooks and Eaters
, by Moira Hodgson

Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper [boiler]. A smell like washing-day! That was the cloth [the pudding bag]. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook’s next door to each other, with a laundress’s next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered—flushed, but smiling proudly—with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.

Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage.

—A CHRISTMAS CAROL, CHARLES DICKENS

NOVEMBER 21

There is also a vegetable which has all the properties of true saffron, as well the smell as the color, and yet it is not really saffron.

—MARCO POLO

Turmeric

Turmeric comes from the rhizome of
Curcuma longa
, a perennial member of the ginger family that grows in tropical India and South America. Like ginger, the plant is grown from the fleshy rhizome. During the growing season, more rhizomes are produced. These are harvested, cooked, dried, and powdered to produce the yellow spice that gives many curry powders their brilliant yellow color. The taste is distinctive too: warm, peppery, and slightly bitter, with aromatic overtones of orange and ginger.

Turmeric has long been used to color textiles and is one of the traditional skin dyes that have both ornamental and ritual significance. For their wedding ceremony, Indonesian couples stain their arms with turmeric, while Malaysian women use it to color their abdomens after childbirth. Kurdish Jews practiced a circumcision ritual in which the mother was ornamented with turmeric, indigo, and henna, to protect her and her infant son from Lilith, the queen of the demons. (My friend Judith tells me that modern Jewish women view Lilith differently, as the archetype of a woman who refuses to be dominated by a man.)

Medicinally, turmeric has been used for digestive and intestinal ailments, and as a treatment for liver problems. It stimulates the production of bile, thereby lowering serum cholesterol levels. A powerful antioxidant, it may inhibit the formation of blood clots that can lead to heart attack. And more recently, researchers—who report that Indian turmeric users suffer far less Alzheimer’s than any other people—speculate that turmeric may play a role in slowing the progression of the disease. Turmeric is a safe yet effective anti-inflammatory drug that has fewer side effects than its chemical counterparts, making it useful in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis.

Keep turmeric handy for a variety of herbal uses. Add it to egg salad, chicken salad, and salad dressings; mix it with brown rice, raisins, and nuts; include it in poultry stuffings and scrambled eggs; use it as a saffron substitute in dishes like paella; add it to dips, yogurt, and cottage cheese; and brew it with ginger for a healing tea. Once you begin using this good-for-you herb, you’ll think of hundreds of other creative ways to include it in your diet.

Learn more about spices:

Spice Lilies: Eastern Secrets to Healing with Ginger, Turmeric, Cardamom, and Galangal
, by Susanne Poth

Turmeric is used by the Malays and Indians in a curious cosmetic paste which is applied to the body of anyone suffering from demoniacal possession.

—MRS. C.F. LEYEL, HERBAL DELIGHT, 1937

NOVEMBER 22

Today or tomorrow, the Sun enters the sign of Sagittarius.

The ninth sign of the zodiac, the masculine sign Sagittarius (the Archer) is ruled by Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. Sagittarius is a mutable fire sign. While Sagittarians can be jovial and freedom-loving, they are sometimes overly optimistic, careless, and may suffer from accidents.

—RUBY WILCOX, “ASTROLOGICAL SIGNS”

Sagittarius Herbs

The planet Jupiter, named for the Roman god of the sky, is said to rule the hips, thighs, lower spine, and the autonomic nervous system, as well as the process of growth and self-preservation. It also governs the body’s largest glandular organ, the liver. Herbs related to Jupiter have traditionally been used to treat lower back problems, arthritis, and rheumatism, and to deal with liver ailments. Jupiter is also related to plants with large taproots and trees that produce fruit and nuts. Herbs of Sagittarius include: