Look What Came in the Mail!

This is from Urban Farmer Seeds from Indianapolis, Indiana.  I'm getting their e-mail newsletter and they had an offer I couldn't pass up the other day.  A $10 coupon!  So I got a herb seed starting kit for basil.  We have very low light here in the winter.  Worse than most places.  So I will start these sometime in early to mid April so they will be growing by mid-May or so.  What I love about Urban Farmer is that they make all (or most) of their seed packets from magazine pages and the plant marker is from recycled material.  They are having a seed sale so check it out.  Maybe another problem for Sharon Lovejoy!  Just saying!  We did have snow.  Didn't get a photo posted or maybe I should do it now.  See how dark it gets here.  We have the lights on a lot during a 'Burgh winter.  It's gone already so don't feel bad.  We had a day in the 40's and it rained.  So bye, bye snow!  Well, hope you are having a great day or night.  Talk to you later.

I Forgot I Had This One!

I got a comment from one of The Herb Companion readers on Facebook the other day about this catalog from Landreths' from New Freedom, PA.  Their catalog is $5.00, but it is very well done with the 2009-2011 catalog cover taken from an original 1884 cover.  The firm was founded by David Landreth in 1784 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  As it says in the catalog, "he chose Pennsylvania because people appeared to have more free time there, and Philadelphia was the center of wealth and sophistication in the United States."  Can't go against that decision!  I forgot that I purchased it at the Mother Earth News Fair in 2010.

The D. Landreth Seed Company is the fifth oldest corporation in America.  As a small American company, Landreth is doing whatever it can to help support jobs for Americans.  For customers purchasing $50 or more, they will refund the price of the catalog.  Better check on the website and see if that is still possible.  They have the African American Heritage Collection, seeds for the patio gardener and a children's garden collection.  They also have heirloom and classic vegetable, flower and herb seeds.  They have about a page and a half of herb seeds.  Lots of basil choices, cumin, fenugreek and purslane (One of my new favorites since Jekka was in town.)  So check them out.  I still need to get into my seed stash and figure out what to order!  So check them out and help them keep Americans employed.

Really mild here (50's) with rainstorms and I know the south keeps getting hammered.  It is almost the end of January!  We did have snow the other day.  We have just forgotten about that entirely!  Hope you all are safe and dry tonight.  Talk to you later.

If I Don't Post For Awhile!

Come over to Pinterest and check to see if I'm alright.  It's addicting and you keep getting e-mails that tell you someone has repinned a pin that you just uploaded or downloaded or liked a pin.  So then you have to check out their boards.  Oh, I think I am in trouble!  I promise to come back.  Oh, Leslie from Comfrey Cottages what have you started?  Have another cup of ginger tea.  Talk to you soon.

Good Foods and Herbs For GERD Sufferers

I enjoy the newsletter from Health.com.  You can sign up for their e-newsletter and it often has a story on reflux disease or GERD.  I think they are repeated often throughout the year because so many people are effected (or is it affected?) by GERD.  For example in 2011, they talked on September 8th about how to reduce reflux and on September 15th they discussed heartburn easing foods.  You get the idea.  Check it out even if you don't have GERD, you may find some good and worthwhile information on a problem you have.

In Dr. Duke's book, The Green Pharmacy, he talks about a couple of spices that may help like powdered cardamom or cinnamon to eliminate gas.  Can I just say I need to slip a bit more cinnamon into The Herbal Husband's food more often!  Just saying!  He also talks about papaya and pineapple both are loaded with digestive enzymes and have been widely used to relieve heartburn and indigestion.  Papaya with a little honey may even prevent it if eaten before a meal or between courses.  He adds that some nutritionists suggest that kiwifruit might help as well.  He talks about having a salad from the Bible with foods like almonds, chicory, dandelion, garlic (can't), lettuce, mustard, olives, onions (can't) and walnuts.  It's funny.  He calls garlic and onions anti-heartburn ingredients.  Can't say that for me!

These foods are listed on the health.com website as:

13 Foods That Fight Acid Reflux
Oatmeal
Ginger (Hello, I should have been reading this before!)
Aloe Vera (for thickening) (I would get this in the health food store.)
Salad but no tomato-onion-cheese-high fat dressing
Bananas
Melon
Fennel
Chicken & Turkey
Fish & Seafood
Roots & Greens
Celery
Parsley
Couscous & Brown Rice

While I was at the hair salon (beauty shop back in my time) I found a parsley and fennel salad from Rachel Ray's Everyday Magazine.  It was in her holiday magazine so it serves 20!  A bit too many, but I'm going to try and cut it in a quarter and make a little and let you know how it is.  Will probably have to eliminate the mustard.  It is a bit too harsh for me.  I have been resorting to balsamic vinegar and olive oil as my dressing choice or lemon juice and olive oil on my salads.  I don't want to go without dressing.  Not eating chocolate or tomato sauce has me depressed enough.

I did a little salmon with fennel while The Herbal Husband was away last year.  Orange juice for me is very problematic and I will probably try that recipe again with vegetable stock or fish stock.  The Herbal Husband is going to Peru for three weeks in March!  Get to eat more seafood.  Yay!   So hope this list helps you and me!  Ha!  I'm sitting sipping my ginger tea.  Really it is hard to believe that it worked so well for me!  As my friend, Kathleen Gips from The Village Herb Shop says hooray for ginger!  You will see in my banner page that the skies are clear at the moment and we awaiting our next storm.  A beautiful winter day here in the 'Burgh.  After being spring like we are in the depths of winter.  Talk to you later.

A List of Foods You May Want to Avoid with GERD!

 This list of foods to avoid comes from the Mayo Clinic website.

 Everyone has specific triggers (and they may not all be triggers for you). Common triggers such as fatty or fried foods, tomato sauce, alcohol, chocolate, mint, (cilantro), garlic (raw), onion (raw), (peppers and cucumbers), (spicy foods), (carbonated beverages), (citrus fruit, except lemons), (fruit juice, except apple juice sort of) and caffeine may make heartburn worse. Avoid foods you know will trigger your heartburn.  (That's sometimes difficult to do!)

My comments in that quote are in parenthesis and bold letters. You may not be able to tolerate peppermint but you may be able to tolerate spearmint which is in the photo above.  Spearmint seems to work better for me.  My master gardening friend and I were discussing why most antacids are peppermint flavored.  I have no idea.  I have to get fruit flavors if I take antacids at all and you know I do.  I also have trouble with cilantro, both raw and cooked.  That's a big problem because The Herbal Husband makes something called Seco with meat, potatoes and cilantro and it is delicious but I always have to take something extra when I have it.  That's just between you and me!

The other food that pains me (pun intended) to avoid is tomato sauce.  I can have a bit of tomato in a salad or on a sandwich but I can't eat pizza with tomato sauce or a big plate of spaghetti with tomato sauce!  I make my own sauce and I can't eat it!  I sometimes have a little bit of sauce and drink a big glass of milk with it.  I know Tyler Florence does a Spaghetti Bolognese sauce that has milk in it, but can you can it?  You see over the years when at the end of the season I have canned whole tomatoes and then as our stash of canned sauce has dwindled, I have tomatoes that I can make into sauce.  I just googled the question and my thought is that I can add it to the sauce when I'm heating it in the microwave for me after the sauce is canned without it.  Does that make sense?  If you have added milk to homemade spaghetti sauce and canned it successfully, please let me know!

Again this is my food list to avoid if you have GERD.  You may or may not have these items on your avoid list.

The wind has picked up here.  We are supposed to get snow.  Not a lot but enough to interrupt our dinner plans for this evening.  Hope you are having a great day.  We'll  talk about foods that are good for GERD in my next post.  Talk to you later.

GERD and Herbs

As you may know I have had GERD for the last 12 years.  On a scale from 1 to 10 with 10 being the worst, I'm a 15.  I had a cough, congestion and hoarseness from the beginning that wouldn't go away with any cough syrup or antibiotic.  I finally went and had a scope done at an ear, nose and throat specialist and found out that acid was coming up into my throat.  Not a good thing.  I have been on medication of some kind since.  For the most part, my GERD has been under control.  For the better part of the last week, I have been having a burning sensation in my throat and my medication times two failed to help.  My major trouble is my lower esophagus sphincter is lax so the acid just has a party every chance I give it.  I also have a hiatal hernia which gives me other complications.  No tomato sauce!

My English Herbal Companion emailed and encouraged me to try homeopathy.  She said it does take time, but it works.  I thought I really don't have time.  I can't have this acid in my throat.  I was already biopsied for Barrett's esophagus which could lead to cancer!  Not good.  I usually don't talk medicinal herbs on this blog.  I am not a practiced medicinal herbalist, but I'm sharing my story with you so it may help you.  One of my favorite websites is the Mayo Clinic for health information.  Well, long story short I went to one of my medicinal herbal books.  Yes, I do have them, but I haven't used them as much as others.  This may change after the story I am about to share.

My Herbal Companion, Bonnie and I got to hear Dr. Duke speak in 1998.  At various times, I read his book because it is easy to follow and he uses good common sense and research.  Why I didn't remember this section on heartburn is unclear.  I must have read it at least a couple of times over the last 12 years.  The first paragraph talks about a colleague that had come to him asking him for a remedy for heartburn.  He told Dr. Duke that he had used ginger and it had worked.  Dr. Duke was surprised because he knew it would be good for nausea caused by motion sickness and morning sickness in pregnant women.  Dr. Duke also suggested that he add peppermint, but he also states that some people cannot tolerate peppermint and I am one of them.  I can tolerate spearmint which works just as well.  I don't understand why antacid which sometimes I have had to rely on is peppermint flavored!

Heartburn does not occur in the stomach.   It is mostly in the throat.  That is because the lower esophageal sphincter doesn't close completely allowing acid back into the throat.  That is exactly what I have.   So I thought I don't have anything to lose.  I might as well try it.  First, though I had purchased some ginger root candy (I can't find this candy on the web any longer or I would suggest it for you.) at The Village Herb Shop in Chagrin Falls.  I was chewing on a piece every so often and it was helping the symptoms.  Not completely but it was helping.  Then I made a tea from the root and sipped that and when I completed the tea, my symptoms were gone!  I'm not kidding.  I have gone back to one pill instead of two.  I did see a new GI doctor in the practice where I go and he was impressed.  We talked about other herbs Dr. Duke suggested including camomile, dill seed and fennel seed.  Because I take blood pressure medicine, I have to be careful about which herbs I use, but he said all of my choices were fine to try.  He said we prescribe ginger ale for patients with upset stomachs and he was pleased that this worked so well for me.

So always go to your doctor if you have persistent burning in your throat.  If you know you have GERD and you are looking for relief, try candied ginger or ginger tea.  Here is what I did:  Take about three slices of fresh ginger root and chop them up and place them in a tea ball or strainer.  Pour boiling water over them and let it steep for about 5 minutes.  Enjoy!  As always, do your homework.  What worked for me might necessarily work for you.  GERD is a very serious disease and if you have heartburn two or more times a week, you need to seek the advice of your doctor.  Again this is my experience.  Your experience may be completely different.  I'll let you know about the other choices of herbs in later posts and I want to discuss foods and herbs you may be should avoid and others that you may want to incorporate into your diet.

And look what came in the mail today.  I think there is a message here for me.  This is one of the seed catalogs I discussed in my Herb Companion post, Herb Seed Catalogs Mark the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.  Isn't this the most beautiful cover for an herb catalog you have seen from Mountain Rose Herbs?  You don't have to wait for the paper catalog to show up, but I love on the inside it says, "~Our catalogue is best viewed while sipping tea~"  Think I'll do that!  Very cold here, but we were in the 50's yesterday!  A weird and wacky January in the 'Burgh!  Talk to you later.

Maybe You Can Help Me with Pinterest?

My buddy, Leslie of Comfrey Cottages has pinned me (get it) with a Pinterest account.  I actually do get it.  So come follow me and see where this adventure takes us.

More Herb Seed Catalogs in the Mailbox!

I decided to update my post for The Herb Companion called Herb Seed Catalogs Mark the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.  Here are the latest arrivals in my mailbox.

Select Seeds is one I have ordered from for a number of years from Connecticut.  They specialize seeds and plants of cottage annuals, flowering vines and fragrant flowers and scented leaves and perennials.  Also they have herbs and edibles and heirloom tomato selections  in both seeds and plants.

Horizon Herbs was one I found online from Google from Oregon.  They have a wide range of organic seeds and plants for spring and summer planting, cover crops, vegetables, culinary herbs and spices, Strictly Medicinal herbs, rare, historical, dye, cacti, odd and wonderful herbs, trees and shrubs.  You get the idea.  They have seeds of Medicine and Seeds of Sustenance.  Haven't order from Horizon yet!  See if it may have what you are looking for.

The last one in the mailbox is from one of my favorite international herb sellers, Richters in Goodwood, Ontario.  Their catalog is a great reference source for me.  They have the latest and greatest herb seeds and plants for sale.  They sell plants both by mail order for the United States and with the right paperwork, you can go to Canada and bring your herb plants home with you.  Going to do that someday soon!  All three of these catalogs have lots of different varieties that you may be looking.  Check them all out.

Well, we are cool not cold again.  Very odd winter so far.  Not complaining, but the plants are really confused!  Hope you had a great day wherever you may be.  Talk to you later.

What a Difference a Day Makes!

It is so cold out!  As you can see, we didn't get the snow forecasted.  I guess you can say that's the good news, but the bad news is, IT'S FREEZING!  I didn't dare step outside.  That's why the photos are a bit blurry.  The wind chill is in the single digits here!  What a difference!  Hope you are staying warm and toasty wherever you may be or cool and comfortable if you are in the southern hemisphere.  It's laundry day so there was much moving in the basement of the herbal jungle!  I did a post about it back in November.  Here's a link.  Got to run.  Talk to you later.