CHOCOLATE EXPLOSION!

It's late December, so the time has come to get making Peppermint bark, and this year, Truffles and Peanut Buttercups as well. I generally don't eat loads of sweets, but during the winter holidays I like to make healthier versions of treats to share with friends and family. I'm including my winging-it recipes that are constantly evolving to document general proportions and to give y'all a starting point, for those of you who've asked how I make these. There are a gazillion ways to make nearly anything, so I'm just recording how I made all this, today. Feel free to leave comments about how you make these! Disaster-prevention tips are always welcome! Here are the recipes. Hopefully y'all listen (better than I do) to recommendations from Home Ec or a grandparent or whoever might have shown you around a kitchen to read the whole recipe from start to finish before embarking.
 

Peppermint Bark

1. Melt chocolate chips or bulk dark chocolate in a double boiler, or a similar rig - a metal bowl resting into a pot of simmering water. Be sure not to let any water splatter into the chocolate or it may seize up. This means instead of a warm pool of pourable liquid chocolate, you'll get a clumpy mess. As the chocolate melts, stir with a metal spoon.  (If it does seize up you can turn it into ganache for truffles.)

2. Line a glass or ceramic casserole pan with at least 1" or 2cm sides with waxed paper. Once the chocolate is completely melted, pour half of it into the casserole pan. If you have loads of chocolate, use a big pan or many big pans, if you don't have much, use a wee pan.

3. Smooth out your chocolate into an even-ish layer, and then let cool.  You can place in the fridge to cool to speed up the process if you like.


4.  As the first layer of chocolate cools, in another metal bowl melt white chocolate. You only need half as much white chocolate (or less) as dark chocolate. Also while the first layer of chocolate is cooling you can place your candy canes into a cloth or heavy plastic bag. Then proceed with hammering the candy canes into bits. Be careful about what surface you do your smashing on.  

5. Once the white chocolate is all melted, let it cool a bit.  Again, you can put it in the fridge to speed up the process.
 
6. Once your first chocolate layer is all cooled and solidified you can pour the next layer, the white chocolate. The heat of the white chocolate will melt the top part of the dark chocolate layer. If you'd like a fairly dramatic contrast between the white and dark chocolates, smooth the white chocolate just enough to spread out the layer, without mixing it too much with the dark chocolate underneath.

7. Let the white chocolate layer cool as you multi-task or breathe or whatever.

8. For your final layer: add the remainder of the dark chocolate that you melted at the beginning.  Re-warm it if necessary. While this third and final layer of chocolate is still soft and warm, sprinkle on the candy-cane bits/powder. A thin layer of the powder will adhere pretty easily. The larger bits may need to be gently pressed into the chocolate so that it dries into the top layer. Let everything harden. Shake off excess candy cane bits and save for later to incorporate into future chocolate adventures. Viola! Peppermint bark. Gently break into pieces and place in glass jars or reuse tins.  

You can make all kinds of chocolate bark.  You can skip the white chocolate and just do one layer of milk or dark chocolate and add things to the top.  In addition to a Peppermint bark, I like to make a healthier bark with dark chocolate sprinkled with raisins, dried cherries, nuts like pistachios and pecans, seeds, cinnamon powder and other herbs and spices, and/or a pinch of sea salt to bring out the sweet.  When making the layer(s) of chocolate aim for it to be around the height of a bar of chocolate or a bit more.  If it's too thick ~ especially if it's a harder, darker chocolate ~ it can be difficult to bite into.

Sprinkling and then patting the candy cane bits into the top layer of
dark chocolate, and the layers of the finished Peppermint Bark.

Note: Please check out the ingredients of all your ingredients. A lot of chocolates contain hydrogenated oils, palm oil, and other such ingredients that can have negative impacts on the people tending and harvesting the crops, the earth, and our health.  Not to mention the child slave labor that poisons the chocolate market - including huge multinationals like Hershey’s and Nestle. For more information, please see: "Chocolate’s Bittersweet Economy: Cocoa Industry Accused of Greed, Neglect for Labor Practices in Ivory Coast."
I've been trying to find a source of bulk fair-trade (certified or not) dark chocolate. The search continues, please let me know if you know of an ethical source for dark chocolate.

Peanut Buttercups

You can make your own Peanut Buttercups, replacing uber-sugared, salted, and hydrogenated-oiled peanut butter with natural peanut butter, sunflower, almond butter, or whatever you'd like. I also added some local Honey and Cinnamon powder.

1. Melt dark chocolate/chocolate chips in a double boiler and stir. Once entirely melted, add the tiniest layer of chocolate to the molds you picked up from a kitchen shop, thrift store, or that you saved from last year's Advent calendar or Ginger-bread-house-making-kits, etc.

2. As the chocolate is cooling a bit you can stir together a small amount of honey and cinnamon to sweeten and spice-n the nut butter to your liking. Add a lil dollop of the filling (straight nut butter or the nut butter-honey-cinnamon blend) into the molds, and press it down/ spread it around if you wish.  Just be sure to keep the filling away from the edges as much as you can, so that the next layer of chocolate you add seals it in.  Shallow molds harden pretty quickly, as long as you're not in a wicked hot kitchen. Larger molds take longer to cool (more surface area/thicker layer of chocolate= longer to cool), so I sometime place those in the fridge.

3. Once cooled, add more chocolate to cover the Peanut Butter-mound and complete the cup. Let it cool again until completely solidified and they should come easily out of the molds.

Peanut Buttercups don't require much chocolate and pack a protein punch. I used silicon star-molds once and it the chocolate got all white and splotchy, but I haven't had this happen in my plastic molds.  It may have had to do with the temperature I warmed the chocolate to?  Today my mom showed me how using two spoons to scoop the chocolate out of the other, which makes the process much smoother! 

Molds, Making the Peanut Buttercups, and the Innards.

Truffles

10 ounces Dark chocolate
1 1/4 cup Coconut milk
optional: Cocoa powder, more Dark chocolate, Coconut flakes

Pour the coconut milk into a double boiler and warm on low heat. Chop the chocolate into smaller pieces and add to the warm coconut milk. Stir the mixture constantly until the chocolate has melted and mixed completely with the liquid. This is your ganache. Refrigerate until hard (approx. 3 hours, you can put in the freezer if you have less time).

Stirring the Ganache, fresh-pressed Ginger juice, and Dad
lends a hand with his Laser Thermometer (138°F/58.88°C) -
checking the temperature is not necessary, it was just for fun

Separate containers holding the various flavors of ganache, Rolling the ganache into balls - the balls got stickier as my hands got stickier, the smoothest ones were created just after rinsing off my hands with warm water (but they all taste good!), Re-hardened ganache, & Finished truffles.

Remove ganache from refrigeration and scoop out by the spoonful, rolling into balls with your hands. Place balls on a wax paper-ed baking sheet and return to refrigeration to harden. Once hardened, remove balls from refrigeration and roll in a shallow bowl of cocoa powder, fair-trade if possible, and/or dried coconut flakes. Or you can melt more dark chocolate in a double boiler and gently roll the cooled balls in the warm chocolate, which when cooled will created a harder outer layer over the softer ganache. If storing for later, place balls in containers, and place waxed paper between layers. Store in the refrigerator and remove 30 minutes before feasting on them.

Flavors: For simple chocolate truffles, chocolate and coconut milk is all you need. However, you can add other simple ingredients to create chocolate flavor explosions! Today I made two batches and separated both in half. Four flavor possibilities! Last time I created Rose truffles using organic rose powder, as well as Vanilla, Coffee, and Ginger truffles.   As the truffles cooled I pressed a tiny bit of dried pink rose petal into the top of each Rose truffle. I pressed a tiny bit of chopped Ginger chew (you could use crystallized ginger with or without the sugar rinsed off) to identify the ginger ones. Atop the Orange I added a couple crushed Red pepper seeds.  And I left the Vanilla ones as they were.

I made Ginger truffles by grating enough fresh ginger root and pressing it through a fine metal strainer to get 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon of fresh ginger juice. Potent!  I added 2 tablespoons of homemade Vanilla extract to the Vanilla truffles. I infused 2 tablespoons freshly-ground fair-trade Coffee beans into the coconut milk for a few minutes, and then strained out the bits before melting in the chocolate. With the exception of the ground Coffee beans, I added the flavor ingredients after I'd removed the ganache from heat and poured it into smaller containers, such as glass measuring cups. I stirred each thoroughly and then placed it in the fridge. I've also infused Coffee beans in brandy to use when I don't want to have to strain out the coffee bits from the coconut milk.

Chocolatey Notes: Playing with chocolate gets messy, so I like to get out all the supplies beforehand and have a spatula handy to scrape all the good chocolate from bowls and fingers! Bendy silicone spatulas are the best (but make do with what you've got)!  As you can see from the photos above, my chocolate explosion-creations let folks know they are homemade with love!  Haha.  If you'd like smoother looking truffles, just keep a bowl of warm water nearby so that you can wash the chocolate off your hands as you're rolling them.  But some of the not-so-smooth ones look like cute little hedgehogs!  And you can always eat the "imperfect" ones :)

A note on flavorings: Something I love about cooking from scratch is that you can choose each and every ingredient you add to your creations.  Herbs and spices are plenty flavorful without involving any kind of artificial colors and flavorings. "Flavorings," natural or otherwise, are born of the perfume industry and can contain really dodgy ingredients. See Eric Schlosser's "Fast Food Nation" for a fascination description of the "Flavoring Corridor".

Keep all the chocolatey bits for a finale mystery chocolate blend!! Melt all the dribbles and chunks into Peanut clusters (roast Spanish peanuts and stir them into the chocolate, place dollops of the concoction onto waxed sheets) or make more mystery Truffle ganache. 

To learn more about chocolate, see the article that my friend Sandra Lory of Mandala Botanicals wrote: "More than a Valentine’s Sweet: Theobroma cacao". 

For more chocolate-y recipes, see the Valentine's Aphrodisiac Recipes post.

Chocolate Spice Elixir: a Warming Aphrodisiac with fresh local Ginger, Cardamom, Cinnamon, Vanilla, local Honey, and Fair trade Cocoa is available on Dandelioness Herbals' online etsy shop 

Today's Sources of Culinary Inspiration: Grammy and Pop-pop's sweets, Julia Child, the films Como Agua Para Chocolate/Like Water for Chocolate, Chocolat, and Tortilla Soup, PBS's The Meaning of Food, and the books Botanica Erotica by Dina Falconi and Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses by Isabel Allende. And I just found out that Maya Angelou recently wrote a book entitled Great Food, All Day Long: Cook Splendidly, Eat Smart.

updated 2/18 and 12/19

DEC 1st IS WORLD AIDS DAY

Dec 1st is World AIDS Day and is the perfect opportunity for getting tested, talking with your partner(s)/kids/parents/friends about safer sex, harm reduction and supporting those in our communities that are HIV positive and living with AIDS. For general info about HIV/AIDS please visit The Body.

Roy Belcher from VT Cares (Committee for AIDS Resource, Education, and Services) has created the film "Breaking Barriers: Fighting Stigma," sharing personal stories of people in Vermont who are living with HIV/AIDS. I was able to attend a viewing at the local public library (where it is available for loan) earlier this week and was moved by the stories shared.

AIDS didn't really impact my life until the summer after graduating from high school when I worked at a Unitarian Universalist conference center that hosted a gathering of gay and bisexual men. I loved serving in the dining hall that week, being surrounded by an inclusive and colorful atmosphere that seemed to both embrace and challenge masculinity - and dining attire ranging from dresses and pearls to nothing but leather thongs. The presence of such a vibrant community of men coming together to relax, dance, learn, share support, feast, etc. was healing for me just to witness, but it was definitely bittersweet. It was heartbreaking to see the quilt that they bring out every year and have to add the names of members of their community who they've lost to AIDS. I don't mean to perpetuate the myth that AIDS only affects gay men, or that it is a "gay disease," but my experience of coming from a small and very hetero-dominant town where HIV/AIDS was rarely discussed and then suddenly being temporarily and peripherally in a community where so many have lost loved ones really had an impact on me. I felt like I was seeing a world that I was not supposed to see.

Anyone with a heart would empathize with the pain of loss, but I was also outraged at the silence. The experiences common to one particular and targeted community (i.e. police brutality in communities of color) is not supposed to be of concern to the majority, to those in the dominant group. For some reason, though I was raised in a heterosexist* and sometimes violently homophobic culture, something just didn't stick with me. The belief that a family is a man with "male" anatomy married to a woman with "female" anatomy, and their children. The idea that heterosexual lifestyles are somehow normal. ?! That sex is defined solely as a cisgender (non-transgender) man penetrating a cisgender woman, which excludes a lot of people and practices. I could go on and on... Because the fact is that whether we've thought about it or not, whether we've explored what we were taught about sexuality and gender, whether we identify as lesbian, gay, queer, questioning, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, straight, somewhere else on the sexuality spectrum, or as something else entirely and whether we identify gender-wise as female, male, trans, genderqueer, non-binary or something else entirely, we are all harmed by homophobia.

Obviously if I identify as a woman and was deemed female at birth and raised as a girl and I'm walking down the street hand-in-hand with my male-identified, male-raised sweetie it's pretty safe to assume that we are not going to be targeted, attacked, or even killed on the basis of our gender and sexual identities. Especially as someone with privilege in the realm of how people perceive my gender and sexual identity, I don't mean to minimize the very real discrimination and violence that queer and transgender people face when I say that we're all harmed by homophobia and transphobia. I don't mean to paint some naive picture that sexuality doesn't matter or to imply that the solution is to simply just love who we want to love and be who we want to be and ignore the experiences of those most impacted by transphobia and homophobia. What I do mean is that we all have sexual and gender identities, even if how we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us is reflected and encouraged in our culture and communities. And for this reason, we all have a stake in getting to the roots of homophobia and transphobia and working towards justice. The existence of homophobia and transphobia, even if we don't notice it in our day to day lives, keeps all of us from thriving. Expose yourself to nearly any kind of media and you will find some (possibly closeted) violent homophobe ranting about gay marriage attacking all that "we" hold dear, another city/county/nation outlawing homosexuality, archaic anti-sodomy laws still on the books, the raping and/or killing of queer and trans people.  Hopefully you'll also see some brilliant, supportive, inclusive, open-minded messages of not just tolerance (putting up with "those people"), acceptance (ok, you're kinda like me), but straight-up, we're-all-in-this-together-and-all-have-the-absolute-and-unquestionable-right-to-be-and-love-who-we-want solidarity! (See the 'Supporting Queer and Questioning Youth' links to the right if you need a bit of that!)

So what I do mean by "no matter who we are we are all harmed by homophobia" is that when we're not free to be our full, radiant selves, when we walk into a doctor's office and a gazillion assumptions are made about our gender and our sex life, when the mainstream translates queer to mean perverse and straight to mean normal, when our cousin-sweetheart-mom-son, etc. is not safe to walk down the street as their full glorious self and maybe with their full glorious partner, when images of glowing white hetero families are crammed down our throat at every commercial break and in every magazine spread, we all suffer. We don't get the access to the health care we need, we don't get accurate information about risk and prevention and the sexual practices we enjoy or want to explore, we live in silence and shame about our bodies and our completely natural attractions and feelings, we're brainwashed into thinking that our dreams of having an equal, spirit-growing partnership and family is not possible, we proceed in our life doing what we believe is expected of us and what we think other people do instead of truly following our path and exploring fully.

All of us. All of us. If these statements don't relate, I feel pretty confident if you and I are able to talk for a few minutes we could find ways that at least most of them actually really do relate to your life. In a big way. Email me.

So the gathering of gay  and bisexual men had their 32 anniversary this year. And in a few days I will turn 32 myself. My birthday wish: Everyone to be able to be their full selves.  This  may look different to each person, but involves self-love, healing from trauma, love and support within our circles of (chosen) family and friends, the safe space to be honest, real, & open, being fully present in our bodies, knowing our boundaries and our needs and voicing them, listening, knowing our status in terms of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and discussing this with our partner(s), kids, friends, etc. when possible, and valuing & respecting ourselves and each other to practice safer sex and making sure that the people in our lives have access to the info and support they need.   

*Heterosexism is a system of attitudes, biases, and discrimination in favor of opposite-sex sexuality and relationships. It can include the presumption that everyone is heterosexual or that opposite-sex attractions and relationships are the only norm and therefore superior... Heterosexism as discrimination ranks gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and other sexual minorities as second-class citizens with regard to various legal and civil rights, economic opportunities, and social equality in many of the world's jurisdictions and societies. (taken from Wikipedia, with the parts I didn't agree with removed. If anyone else has a better definition, please post it!)

I can't leave on that note. So, action! Check out what kind of anonymous, free HIV testing is happening in your neck of the woods. Get tested. Support these projects by giving some time or money. Let others know about it. Wear a red ribbon. If you feel comfortable, tell others about your experience getting tested to help de-stigmatize STI's, open up conversations, and create a culture of awareness. When someone makes some ignorant comment about AIDS, school them. (We gotta be the good sex educators most of us unfortunately didn't have!) Educate yourself. Attend presentations, films, and drag balls that support organizations that focus onHIV/AIDS support, testing, prevention, and education. Dispel misconceptions like "Oh, it's okay that we didn't use a condom cuz s/he looks clean." Question gender. Challenge homophobia, transphobia, and rigid ideas of gender at the dinner table, in the work place, in the classroom, at the ballot box, in the bedroom, etc. Address people with the name and pronoun that they determine for themselves (even if you knew them in the past with a different name/gender). Have you got any more ideas? Please post them or send them to me. 

Please see earlier blog post:  In Praise of Pink (Toenails), Masculinity, and Transgender Propaganda. 

(Slightly updated Dec 5, 2018)

Idea and Remedies for When You're Home Sick

  

State of Vermont postage stamp with Red Clover, Yarrow pollination, Echinacea blossom, Morning dew on ripening Elderberries, Lavender and Chamomile harvest. All taken in and near my garden, except for the stamp photo.

This blog was born because I am not so good as staying home and doing nothing. I love to be home, and staying home sick makes me just want to cook, clear my space, get crafty, make fun packages to send to people, catch up on work, etc. So this time, in my attempts to sit still, I've created a blog, watched 1/2 a movie, and read up on lionesses. I get a bit whiny when I'm feeling under the weather and I often forget even the most simplest remedies. I called a dear friend and she recommended the same herb that my housemate (who's also under the weather) loves. Red Clover. The state flower of Vermont, the sweet edible flower, the blossom that bees love and that grows abundantly in fields in these parts. It helps to dry up mucus and promotes movement in the lymph system.  I created this blog post to help remind me of how to support my body/myself next time I'm sick and I'm sharing it here with y'all in case any of these ideas resonate for when you're feeling under the weather as well...

WHEN I START COMING DOWN WITH SOMETHING I:

*Take Echinacea and/or Spilanthes tinctures to boost the immune system - about 3 dropperfulls whenever I think of it, maybe every couple of hours throughout the day.
*Cancel plans so that I can rest.
*Take a hot bath with a few drops Lavender essential oil and/or sea salt.
*Make chicken or vegetable soup and add lots of spices.
*Make loads of tea with fresh Ginger root (which is warming and stimulates the immune system), local honey (soothes a sore throat), and fresh squeezed Lemon or Lime juice (vit C). If I need to be out and about for awhile and won't be able to make my own tea (because I live in culture where there aren't tea kettles everywhere) I grate fresh Ginger into local honey and carry it with me to swig like a syrup or add to water. This time I added Lime juice as well.

WHEN IT'S OFFICIAL THAT I'M SICK - WHICH USUALLY MANIFESTS AS GETTING MUCUS-Y, LOW-ENERGY, AND A BIT ACHY, TO REST AND DECONGEST I:

*Massage a decongestant salve on my chest, being sure to gently rub below my clavicles to stimulate the lymph system. This time I'm using: White Pine Salve made with the sap, needles, and bark from a fallen tree infused in olive oil and thickened with beeswax from my friends' hive, as well as Bud Salve that I made with Balm of Gilead (Balsam Poplar buds harvested from a fallen tree) and fresh St. Johnswort buds infused in sunflower and sesame oils, fair-trade shea butter from Burkina Faso, West Africa, and local beeswax.  If I can lay down, I like to place a hot water bottle (or glass Mason jar filled with hot water) on my chest to help break up congestion and get things moving.

*I also rub in a soothing salve or oil around and inside my nostrils and on my lips to prevent them from drying out, especially when I'm blowing my nose a lot. This time: Calendula salve with Lavender essential oil. (I wouldn't use a muscle rub/decongestant salve on my sensitive mucus membranes, as the essential oils may be irritating)  You can keep it simple and use straight olive, sesame, or other oil, or you can use herb-infused oils or salves. For salve-making instructions, see my (Im)migrantion and Lip Balms for Social Justice?! post.

*Make a big fat pot of turkey vegetable soup. This time I warmed olive oil, added 2-3 chopped onions, 1 head of homegrown garlic crushed and chopped, browned 2 turkey legs on the bone, and then added 2 chopped carrots, 2 sweet potatoes, and enough water to cover. I add more garlic at the end, so that I'm receiving the benefits of nearly-raw garlic, and I add other herbs and spices both at the beginning and end of cooking as well. This time I added Marjoram and Lavender Bee Balm (Monarda fistulosa, which tastes like oregano and cayenne to me) that I dried from my garden. Other times I've added Thyme, Cinnamon, Basil, and/or Coriander (if using whole seeds I add at them at the beginning so that they can warm in the oil like friends from Southern India showed me).

These culinary herbs have been used for generations all over the world because the volatile oils that give them their incredible taste and aroma are also medicinal. They help to relax the digestive track for better digestion and absorption, and also boost the immune system. I let this soup simmer at least an hour, and then remove the meat from the bone. I saved my garlic skins and simmered them with the bones to make another broth. If you're making soup or bone broth, it's really quite nice to freeze some so that if you or a friend/family member gets sick it's already made. Sometimes I eat the soup as is, sometimes I add a spoonful of miso to my bowl (but not to the big pot or the heat will kill all that good beneficial bacteria that nourishes our system), or some rice or rice noodles.  If the thought of cooking all this makes you want to cry (you're vegetarian/vegan, you're exhausted, you don't cook much, etc.) fear not! You can just stir miso into warm water and call it good. If you have energy for it, you could crush and then chop Garlic, grate Ginger root, and take a pinch of Cayenne and add all this to your miso paste. This keeps in the fridge for a long while and you can add tahini (with or without local honey) to it to make a spread or sauce. Something else you can make to have on hand for easy soups are herbal ice cubes. The next time you get a bunch of cilantro, parsley, dill, basil, etc from your garden, farmer's market, or grocery store, chop it finely, pack it into ice cube trays, and cover with water. Freezing captures the green vitality of the plant and you can store the cubes in freezer bags to later add to soups, stir fries, and any other recipe that calls for a bit of fresh herbs. Be sure not to eat refined sugars now as they suppress your immune system. If you're craving sweets, you can add honey to your tea or eat straight by the spoonfull. You can roast sweet potato fries, winter squash, beets, carrots. These autumn roots and squashes contain a lot of natural sweetness, and I always crave these foods this time of year, particularly when I'm sick. Also, it's recommended to avoid dairy products as they contribute to gack-yness - as it creates more mucus/phlegm that you have to deal with.

*Do a respiratory steam by pouring steaming hot water into a metal, glass, or ceramic bowl, adding herbs, and leaning over the bowl with a towel draped over your head. Breathe in the steam, which carries the plants' volatile oils, for 10 minutes or so.  The herbal steam helps to break up mucus and moisten dry airways.  This should feel good.  If the steam is too hot and/or herbs too intense, come out from under the towel and wait til the water cools down a bit or some of the oils steam off. You can add a small handfull of aromatic culinary herbs such as Thyme, Oregano, Lavender, Herbs de Provence blend, a couple Peppermint tea bags, or a drop or two of essential oils of these plants. (Remember that essential oils are highly concentrated and may irritate skin and the respiratory tract if you use too much!) Voila, a respiratory steam and facial steam all in one!  I especially like to do this before I go to bed and when I wake up, but it's good to do anytime.

*Use a Neti Pot to thin mucus and clear the nasal passages, especially if you're prone to sinus infections.  Hooray for nasal irrigation!  If you don't have a NetiPot, you can just cup the water in your hand or check out do-it-yourself neti pots online.  Warm distilled water so that it's hot enough to dissolve a pinch of non-iodized sea salt, stir, and let cool to body temperature.  Be sure to clean everything well and keep the water pressure to a gentle flow.

*Tea! By the pot or quart! Yesterday I made tea with Anise Hyssop and Lemon Balm from my garden and Licorice root. Today I made a pot of Tulsi (aka Holy or Sacred Basil) and a blend of Mint family plants (Peppermint, Anise Hyssop, Catnip, Damiana, etc.) Getting plenty of fluids helps to stay hydrated and helps flush the cooties out.

*Take tinctures specific to your constitution and symptoms to support your immune response.  Which herbs are you drawn to? Elecampane, Elderberry, Yarrow, Thyme, and Elderflower all support the respiratory system. Calendula, Red Clover, Echinacea, Spilanthes, and other lymphatic herbs all support good movement in the lymph system, especially when you're clearing an infection and probably not moving/ exercising so much. If you're not so keen on the taste of tinctures, you can add them to your warm tea or mix them with honey.

*Take syrups! I made "All Power To The People! Eldercampane Syrup" on the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton, as I listened to interviews with former members of the Black Panther Party and reflected on the connections between our immune systems and community self-defense.  I made this syrup in honor of all those who’ve organized for community health.  It contains Elecampane root from my family's farm, fresh Elderberries I harvest by hand, local Ginger root, Cinnamon, local Honey, Lime juice, local Apple cider vinegar, and tinctures of Elecampane, Thyme, and Monarda (Lavender Bee Balm). I haven't made a batch yet this season, however I have made Licorice root and Coltsfoot leaf syrup to soothe friends' persistent cough. Licorice is also calming and anti-viral, so even though I don't have a hacking cough, I'm taking this remedy to support my respiratory system. (There are many ways to make syrups. You can simply simmer a handful each of the herbs in a medium pot of water until the liquid is reduced to half, and then stir in 1/2 of the amount of remaining liquid's worth of local honey. Adding a nip of brandy or tincture to this will help prolong it's life. Store in the fridge.) Syrups can be added to warm water for an instant tea. For syrup recipes, see my Elderberry (and other) Syrup Recipe(s) post.

*A note on cough suppression: it isn't good. Coughing is a natural process to get gunk out of our lungs. However, if coughing is keeping you from sleeping and getting much-needed rest, you may choose to temporarily suppress your cough when you want to sleep. When a non-productive cough was keeping me up all hours I tried soothing, mucilaginous herbs such as Coltsfoot, Plantain, Wild Lettuce, Chamomile, Wild Cherry bark. The sleepless-nights situation was starting to get desperate and I was ready to go to the pharmacy for some very non-herbal cough-suppressing concoctions when my friend from Ireland suggested Carrageen, aka Irish Moss - a seaweed. I soaked a small handful of Carrageen (pronounced care-ah-GHEEn) in 2 cups of water for 10 minutes, simmered it for 20, strained it, and then added the juice of half a Lime, a spoonful of my friends' local Honey, and a nip of Whiskey (not necessary, but I added it for extra respiratory relaxation). Finally, a full nights sleep. Hooray for slimy seaweed! After the first night of full sleep I continued taking this bedtime tea, adding a few drops of respiratory-supporting tinctures as well.

*REST: Watch movies, read, draw, nap, etc. Note to self (and maybe you, too) : Staying home and doing tons of work doesn't count as resting!

*Keep warm! In various traditions it's really important to keep yourself - especially your core - warm and to protect your body from sources of cold - be it drinking cold drinks, going barefoot, being outside without a scarf, etc. The nape of the neck and kidney areas are especially susceptible to "pernicious winds," a concept in Traditional Chinese Medicine where external wind can enter the body and cause dis-ease.

*Let your friends know! Some of them may be happy to come by and drop off some food, herbs, movies, etc, or just to call and check in on you and send you funny memes!

*Remember that, like a new moon, season, and year, getting sick can be an opportunity to re-set and integrate some changes you've been wanting in your life. Is there something that's been sapping your energy? Conversations that need to be had? Something important to you that you're not tending to? Self-care practices that you're wanting to make some time for? Use this change-in-routine opportunity to make good things happen!  Don't feel you have to do it all now, but sometime getting sick is a good time to dream and brainstorm.

*When you start feeling well, keep on with the remedies! After being sick, it's easy to launch back into life full-speed once we get our energy back. This could be bad news if we stop supporting our immune system while it's still recovering. Keep making teas, avoiding sugar, taking time to rest, etc. so that you can keep feeling better and hopefully prevent getting sick again soon.  Remedies such as Elderberry elixirs and syrup and Fire Cider are tonics that can be taken regularly to support you as you're feeling better.  You can make these remedies yourself or support your local herbalists.

Many of the remedies listed above are available on my DandelionessHerbals Etsy Shop and I would be happy to send along a particular remedy or put together a Get Well Soon kit for you or a loved one. For my more detailed instructions on making your own teas, infused oils, salves (chest rubs), and tinctures, see Numen Medicine-Making Resource Guide and: 

*Elderberry (and other) Syrup Recipe(s)
*(Im)migrantion and Lip Balms for Social Justice?

*Winter Immune Health: Tonic Not Toxic
*Ginger Lovers Unite!: Medicinal and Culinary Uses of Ginger

(Blog post updated on 2/16, 1/17, 1/20)