Thursday, August 11, 2011

Home Herbal

9780756671839HHome Herbal – the ultimate guide to cooking, brewing, and blending your own herbs
Published at DK Canada

About the book

Recommending herbs for both well-being and minor ailments, featuring an A-Z directory of 100 key herbs, and with information on how to grow, harvest, prepare, and use them, Home Herbal offers a wealth of practical advice on the medicinal, cleaning, and consumptive uses of herbs, with the emphasis on what anyone can achieve in their garden and kitchen.

My Thoughts

This is book definitively very interesting if you have a garden and you grow herbs.    I was interested in the fact that I could prepare some medicinal products out of herbs when I requested this book.   But let me tell you that I got more than I would have expected from it.

The book is divided in three main sections; A-Z of Herbs where you get all the information you need to know about specific herbs like garlic, celery seeds, fennel, hyssop to name a few, Use Herbs which contains recipes to heal you from the inside and other ones to heal you from the outside, and Source Herbs which contains information on how to grow your own herb garden.

In the first section you get specific information on herbs used in recipes.   Take the Lavender for example. You will get a picture of the plant, it’s growth habit, the main constituents as well as it’s actions.   Lavender is widely recognized for it’s relaxant ability but did you know it can be used for antispasmodic, a tonic for the nervous system, circulatory stimulant, antibacterial, analgesic, carminative, cholagogue, anti-depressant and anti-emetic?  In this page of information, you will also discover how to use the plant with infusion, tincture, massage oil, hair rinse and essential oil.   And you will learn on how to growth it, forage it as well as harvest it.

In the Use Herbs section, you can go through a recipe chooser depending of your….  Healthy skin and hair, digestion, circulation, women’s health, men’s health, coughs and colds, first aid, muscles and joints, mind and emotion, as well as  pregnancy and childbirth, .   Some recipes are accompanied with stunning pictures and a clear step-by-step method.  Other recipes only contains the how to make instructions.   Each recipe also has icons indicating what it will help in your body.  For example, the Sour Cherry and Raw Cocoa Smoothie indicates that it will help you regulate your sleep.  Before giving the recipe a little text indicates the benefits of it for you.   The Sour Cherry and Raw Cocoa Smoothie is apparently ideal for before or after exercising and for long-distance runners, as the anti-inflammatory properties of cherries aid quicker muscle recovery and pain relief.   Sour cherries are also a source of natural melatonin, a potent antioxidant with immune system-modulating properties.   If eaten regularly, they may even help to regulate the body’s natural sleep patterns.  

The recipes you will find in this book can be for juices, smoothies, teas, cordials, syrups, tinctures, soups, salads, and bars.  You can also find instructions to bake face and body creams, body scrubs, body oils, body spritzes, body powders, soaps, cleansers, toners, face masks, balms, bath bombs, bath infusions, as well as hair and scalp treatments.   I am wondering where I could find some of the ingredients.  I suspect that I could easily find them in a health store.    My only problem now is that I don’t have a garden at this moment.   Eventually I would love to have one but the play structure that I designed and that my father-in-law built with the help of my oldest son and my husband is taking much of the area in the backyard. 

I know that many would find this book interesting.  If you are into making your own bath products or simply want to get healthier using herbs, Home Herbal is for you!

Home Herbal is available at your favourite bookstore, even amazon.ca.

Disclaimer: Thanks to DK Canada for sending me the above mentioned product for review purposes. I was not monetarily compensated for this review. Please note that the review was not influenced by the Sponsor in any way. All opinions expressed here are only my own.

No comments:

Post a Comment