Morning Shot: Sláinte!

To Good Health!

Fire Cider is an herbal tincture. You can find any number of recipes online that will yield a pleasantly fiery vinegar with a well-balanced blend of spicy, pungent, and citrus flavors infused into raw apple cider vinegar, and finished with a little sweet local honey.

Fire Cider is warmly delicious, whether as a shot or in a salad dressing. It's also a wonderful blend of medicinal herbs! The Fire Cider recipe was developed in early 1980s by Rosemary Gladstar "as part of her effort to bring medicinal herbalism back into people’s kitchens, as part of their food and as a way of being, not just for medicinal purposes." Her original recipe contained garlic, onions, horseradish root, ginger root, hot peppers, sometimes turmeric, and often echinacea; all powerful immune enhancers that help ward off infections, colds, flus, and bronchial congestion.

I have been using Fire Cider this winter, a shot a day (when I remember), to help keep the immune system healthy and to ward off infections, and all told, I've suffered significantly less illness thus far (knock on wood).

This recipe is very close to my own, though I used fresh (chopped) turmeric, and I added a whole chopped orange and some fresh oregano. Use what you have!

I Am Become Spring

Last year's poinsettia is blooming now.

I like to say that there is magic in a seed. Plant it, and it will yield any combination of flowers, fruit, root, leaf, and seed that we can enjoy and consume, and it will nourish us. But also, we can save just one seed from that magical plant, and grow another. One plant can make hundreds, or even thousands of itself.

And this is why I grow: it's an act of faith. One gift I've received from growing is a real appreciation for the bleakness of winter. Under cold and snow and mud and stark winter skies, seeds and plants take nourishment from the earth. Dormant is still active; it's just a different pace, a different exchange of energy and nutrients.

Today, it is spring.

Winter is all about growth. 
Having finally connected with this truth, I find myself growing now all year long. Outside, winter vegetables grow (albeit slowly) in their low tunnels. Little carrots, radishes, and beets are all nestling under earth and straw, and the cold does not scare them. Inside, I watch hundreds of tiny seedlings start their journey. They will become nourish us, literally becoming part of me, part of my children, part of my friends. Talk about a Holy Communion.

I am a priestess of husbandry. I hold a seed from last summer's tomato in my hand, and I conjure July.