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Southwest Massachusetts & Northwest Connecticut Pagan Homepage
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Welcome!! Below you`ll find some HERBAL and Mountain recipes
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CUCUMBER WITH IRISH MOSS CREAM......
In an enamel pan put the chopped peels of 6 cucumbers. Add 2 oz. Lanolin and 11 0z. of your favorite oil (Apricot kernel, Olive, Almond, coconut, or any salad oil)Sprinkle on 1 oz. cowslip flowers and 2 oz. Irish moss. Add additional oil if needed to barely cover the ingredients. Cover the pot and store away in a cool dry place for about a week. When all the ingredients are throughly soaked and the oil has taken up the scent of the ingredients, put it on the stove and bring it to a boil, then simmer for 5 minutes. Strain, Add 1 teaspoon of Benzoin and stir throughly. Put away in a clean glass container. In a few weeks a little sediment may settle down to the bottom of the container;when it does, decant off the clear green oil, throw away the sediment and share this marvelous oil with three of your friends as thy
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Other uses for common plants.........
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SUNFLOWER
(helianthus annuus)
The leaves are used for fodder; the flowesr for its yellow dye. The seeds are eaten as food, and yield an oil which in turn yields high quility protein, about 80% polyunsaturates which reduces the cholesterol level of the blood. The Russians are said to eat the seeds daily to preserve the male potency Hmmm? they are very high in vitiman B content. They also act as a diuretic and as an expectorant for all parts of the respir atory surfaces, and are useful in coughs and colds. The Indians used the oil as a hair greese, and warm, as a rub for rheumatic parts. The baked roots were also used as a poultice, in rheumatism and arthritis, bruises and contusions. The entire plant was holy to the sunworshipers of Peru and was used in religious ceremonies
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Wintergreen (gaultheria procumbens)
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Also called deerberry, teaberry shrub , or mountain tea. The oil obtained from the leaves of this low evergreen herblike shrub contains Methyl Salicylate which is used in the preparation of aspirin (though now its made synthetically). Until 1874 the only commercial source of aspirin was by hydrolysis of the oils from the sweet birch bark or wintergreen leaves. The leaves are sharply astringent and are used as an antiseptic, analgesic, stimulant, carminative, and aromatic. They can be used as a compress to help cure skin problems or headache. The oil is widely used as a flavoring agent in candies and gum, and as a counterirritant in oitments and lotions for swollen joints. A tea of the leaves can be drunk whenever aspirin might be used.
Check out your back yard or wooded area as these hardy little plants are the first in Spring to pop up over the snowline with their bright red berries.
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