Cooking for Health

By Crooked Bear Creek Organic Herbs

Serving medicine for dinner may not seem terribly appetizing, but most cultures traditionally eat much of their medicine. It may not be a coincidence that nature has provided so many of our medicinal needs in herbs that taste good. When you want to take herbs over a long period of time – either to treat a chronic problem or to fend off disease – incorporating medicinal plants into your meals makes a lot of sense.

The next time you add a pinch of this or that, consider that you are doing far more than flavoring your meal. Throughout these posts and other websites, you have seen many familiar kitchen herbs and spices mentioned as medicines. For example, ginger relieves pain, garlic is “nature’s antibiotic” and ginger and turmeric, two of the main ingredients in curry powder, improve liver function.

Almost every cookbook is filled with recipes that rely on herbs…

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Edible Spring Greens {Recipes}

By Crooked Bear Creek Organic Herbs

Crooked Bear Creek Organic Herbs

Spring Green Salad

It’s time to renew. This applies to our outer worlds as well as to our inner worlds. Spring has traditionally been a time to jump-start the liver and gently cleanse our bodies. The natural world, with its infinite wisdom, provides us with every opportunity to do just this. Bitter and nutrient-packed greens come to life, and for those of us paying attention to nature’s hints, provide us with delicious and nutritious Spring tonics.

Dandelion greens are packed with vitamins and minerals, and also, provide a bitter kick that helps support liver function. This is important during spring because the hepatic function can become naturally a little sluggish after a more sedentary winter filled with rich seasonal food. Violet-greens and chickweed are super-packed with nutrients, making them just the spring pick-me-up your body needs. Young greens of dandelion and violet especially are ideal, for both texture and taste reasons. You’ll…

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What to Harvest: March

Dandelion, A Common Garden Herb

I make a wilted dandelion greens dish that’s fantastic after a long winter. Get the leaves young for eating. The older leaves are bitter.

Crooked Bear Creek Organic Herbs

Taraxacum officinale

Also, Known As:

Blow Ball
Cankerwort
Dandelion
Lion’s Tooth
Pissabed
Priest’s-crown
Puff Ball
Pu Gong Ying
Pu-kung-ying
Swine Snout
Telltime
White Endive
Wild Endive

The dandelion is a common garden herb, with easily recognized flowers. During the spring season, the leaves and the root of the dandelion begin to produce mannitol, which is a substance utilized in the treatment of conditions such as hypertension and a weakened heart in continental Europe – where it is often prescribed by herbalist for patients with these conditions. A herbal dandelion tea made using the roots and the leaves of the herb are good to take from about the mid of March to about mid-May in the treatment of such conditions. Prepare the herbal dandelion tea in this way, first, boil a quart of water in a pot, slowly reduce the heat and then add 2 tbsp. of cleaned and chopped fresh…

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Sustainable Wild Collection Protects People, Plants, and Animals

Crooked Bear Creek Organic Herbs

Chances are, you’re deeply connected with wild plants and don’t even realize it.

All of us in countless ways, whether we recognize it or not, are deeply connected to wild collecting.

Wild plants, as the term suggests, aren’t grown on farms. Instead, they’re collected in meadows, forests and deserts. Since ancient times, they’ve served as natural and essential ingredients in foods, fibers, dyes, cosmetics and traditional medicines.

Consider the açai berries in your super smoothie. They’re wild collected in the Brazilian Amazon. The pure maple syrup you save for special breakfasts most likely comes from the forests of Canada or the northern regions of the United States. The candelilla wax in your favorite skin care products originates in the deserts of northern Mexico. The licorice root used in candies and lozenges could be wild collected in many places — Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan. And at Wildwood Enterprises, more…

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Wild Foods and Foraging

Crooked Bear Creek Organic Herbs

It’s all rainy days, low slung clouds, and rain on tin-roofs around the Gunnison Valley these days—a much needed, thirst-quenching storm has arrived and settled in. A perfect excuse for warm coffee, bouquets of flowers on the table, and a book, of course.

It’s also a great time to get well-versed in the foraging dos and don’ts. There is plenty to learn in the way of safety, sustainability, legalities, terms, and botany in the world of foraging, and its best to have at least a cursory grasp on these things before heading out, wicker basket and clippers in hand.

Today, a word on foraging safety, considerations, and a note on common poisonous plants to the mountain states. All of which, can be found in Briana’s new book Mountain States Foraging, a guidebook to wild edibles in the mountain west.

Foraging for Briana has been a lifeline to a wild…

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