Tag Archives: Monica Wilde

The Birth of a New World

How can I speak of hope when so many have died? The tragedy is that those who have passed are all the beloved of someone who lives to mourn them. Many innocent lives cut short.

The sun continues to rise. As Francesca Melandri wrote, in A Letter from Italy, “We are witnessing the birth of a new world”. Just what sort of world it is will depend so much on the lessons learned from this and the choices we make – and I mean we the citizens – coming out of it.

Gaia is swinging the pendulum back to the centre. Our beautiful blue planet is a self-regulating organism. This is more than just James Lovelock’s hippy hypothesis. Science has shown it to be true. Our entire evolution depends on her keeping the atmosphere just right for Life. The right amount of oxygen in the air we breathe, the water we drink – life-giving. Filtering the sunlight that plants and algae convert into the food that all animals are dependent on – life-giving. Life has flourished in her mastery of ecochemistry, her juggling of the winds and rains, her influence from the deepest ocean to the frozen tundra.

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GRATITUDE FOR THE PLANTS

The more I work with the plants, the more I become eternally grateful for what they give to us. They have an uncanny knack of being in exactly the right place and the right time when you need them. It’s hardly surprising that the Cherokee’s have this Creation belief:

“Each tree, shrub and herb, down even to the grasses, agreed to furnish a remedy for some one of the diseases named, and each said: “I shall appear to help man when he calls upon me in his need”.”

This could not be more true. As I get older, and hopefully a little wiser, I am learning to trust the plants implicitly. The depth of healing they can bring to a patient is often phenomenal and I am often full of awe. As I am becoming, in Stephen Buhner’s words “vegetalista” they appear, as if summoned on a whisper or a prayer in our lives, quietly but insistently making themselves obvious in subtle yet insistent silence.

It’s hard to explain this, certainly scientifically, without sounding bonkers. I spend a huge amount of time reading and researching, and yet I find that it is meditation that provides the clarity. When the plants present themselves they sometimes surprise me. I’ll say “Oh, it’s you!” and on reflection “Oh of course!!” as I realise the why.

Recently the forgotten herbs have started to make their presence felt. Humble weeds and meadow plants whose use has been lost to the passage of time. With climate change and overcrowding diseases are changing. My research area is Lyme disease. The tick bourne bacteria Borrelia, Bartonella, Babesia, Rickettsia, Erlichia, the viruses and molds. As the number of people infected becomes clearer, now that there is more ‘official’ recognition (a NICE pathway and 11 WHO medical categories for it), the plants appear too. A new John Hopkins lab study demonstrates the bactericidal power in vitro of Cryptolepis, black walnut, Japanese knotweed and co., herbs that Stephen Buhner and Julie McIntyre have been working with in over a decade of pioneering work with Lyme. The experience and trust coming before the laboratory proof provides vindication.

So Marsh Woundwort who found me four years ago is, I find, the closest thing I’ve known to an ‘anti-anaphylactic’ herb, quick acting and powerful in allergies and flares. In cases of Lyme and lupus flares and in chronic gut reactions I have watched her calm skin, gut, kidneys and tissues.

Now Mouse-Ear Hawkweed is calling. Before WWII he was a specific for brucellosis. A disease that mainly cattle had, that could be transmitted to humans, caused by the Brucella bacteria. Well it turns out now that Brucella and Bartonella are siblings on the tree of life. Well who’d have thought?

In Scotland, Japanese knotweed is an invasive species with a ‘bad boy’ reputation. A lot of resource goes into spraying poisons to kill it. Yet if people would take the time to dig it and dry it, I would buy every single rhizome. It is a herb par excellence for Lyme, killing Borrelia and alleviating the crippling joint pain that goes with it.

This morning, as I write, the sun is gently coming up on a new day. The meadow outside my window is in full bloom with hogweed, loosestrife, dock, nettle – a jumble of plants each one with a gift. As the countryside around me is slowly concreted over in the name of development, I watch their habitat disappear. And yet it is the weeds, determined to keep popping up – whatever obstacles we humans unthinkingly place in their path – that offer us healing now. And I am humbly grateful for their presence in our lives.

I recently read one of Stephen Harris Buhner’s essays and would like to include this quote that resonated:

“Plants are also highly responsive to the needs of their community. As I go into in depth in my book The Lost Language of Plants they sense when any member of their ecosystem is ill and begin producing the needed compounds. If other plants are ill, they send those compounds through mycelial networks to reach the plants who need them. If it is any of the multitude of animals in the region, they send out chemical cues through their stomata, letting those animals (who are far more attuned to their body wisdom than we are) know the location of the medicines they need.”

The full essay can be read at https://www.stephenharrodbuhner.com/articles/

I recently read one of Stephen Harris Buhner’s essays and would like to include this quote that resonated:

“Plants are also highly responsive to the needs of their community. As I go into in depth in my book The Lost Language of Plants they sense when any member of their ecosystem is ill and begin producing the needed compounds. If other plants are ill, they send those compounds through mycelial networks to reach the plants who need them. If it is any of the multitude of animals in the region, they send out chemical cues through their stomata, letting those animals (who are far more attuned to their body wisdom than we are) know the location of the medicines they need.”

The full essay can be read at https://www.stephenharrodbuhner.com/articles/

NOW IS THE TIME FOR ACTION

You. Yes you! Did you know that what you do to the Earth, you do to yourself?

When you nurture the planet, you look after your body. For only by nourishing yourself with food that grows in healthysoils, pollinated by insects, with clean water and the right amount of sunshine, does your body stay strong and free from disease. As as you are nourished so too is the Earth.

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Chilli Haw Ketchup

This is one helluva ketchup meets brown sauce baby. There is nothing like Chilli Haw Ketchup to put some fire in the belly this winter. It’s got an amazing taste, sweet and sour, peppery, tangy, umami. I remember Chinese haw flakes from when I was a child. This is that taste but with a grown up kick. Use as a condiment, marinade or just with cheese.

Ingredients
750 grams haws (no stalks)
500 ml vinegar (homemade or apple cider)
500ml water
250 grams dark brown sugar
2 red chilli peppers
Black pepper to taste

Directions
Simmer the haws and the chilli peppers in the water and vinegar until the flesh is really soft. Strain the mixture through a wire sieve. Push the berries around the sieve with the back of a spoon, trying to get as much of the pulp as possible through the sieve. (An ideal job to delegate!)

Return to the pan and add the sugar and black pepper. Bring to the boil and simmer until the sauce is thick. Pour into sterilised glass jars or bottles with a reasonably wide neck. Keep in a dark cupboard – the flavour just keeps on improving with age.

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Green Sweet Cicely Seed Sweets

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How to make sweet cicely seed brittle, a form of boiled sweet, and mukhwas, a foraged wild take on Indian sugar coated fennel seeds.

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Sweet cicely (Myrrhis odorata) is found growing wild in the parts of the British Isles that have a cold enough winter for the seed to set. This is mainly north Wales and the Midlands and north, being abundant in Scotland. It is easily distinguished from other umbillifers as it has a distinctive aniseed smell, has velvety soft leaves that are marked on the base fronds with faded, whitish patches that, at a casual glance, look like a bird shat on it. It has very juicy stems that, containing anethole which is sweeter than sugar, can be boiled with rhubarb instead of sugar. It makes delicious crumbles, ice cream and an excellent rhubarb, sweet cicely and ginger jam. Alternatively infuse it in vodka to make a wild sambuca!

The seeds, eaten young and raw, are reminiscent of the aniseeds found in the centre of traditional gobstoppers (in the US, jawbreakers). So it was only a matter of time before I experimented with sweet cicely candy!

Ingredients

2 cups of young green sweet cicely seeds
2 cups of granulated sugar
1 cup of water
1 dessertspoon of glucose syrup
1/2 teaspoon vanilla bean paste

Directions

Pick the young sweet cicely seeds when still tender. If you leave it too late in the year they become fibrous. Late May is a good time to harvest in Scotland.

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Put the water and sugar into a saucepan over a gentle heat, stirring, to slowly dissolve the sugar. Then bring to the boil. Once it has reached a slow boil, add the sweet cicely seeds. Simmer for 10 to 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until you can put a drop of the sugar solution onto a cold plate and it keeps its spherical shape without collapsing flat onto the plate.

Now, using a pot holder to hold the pan, hold the pan lid on leaving a small gap, tilt and strain the excess sugar solution off into a silicone flan case leaving the seeds trapped in the pan. (Carefully: Hot sugar burns!) Allow it to spread out thinly in the case by tilting it from side to side while still warm. Leave to cool before scoring and breaking into pieces.

sweet 4Return the pan to the heat and ensure any remaining sugar solution is mixed evenly through the seeds and fully absorbed. Empty onto a silicone sheet and separate with a fork to make a version of mukhwas – a take on Indian sugar-coated fennel seed mouth fresheners.

sweet 5Store both, when cool, in airtight containers.

Fermented Wild Garlic

The bright green shoots of wild garlic are one of the most heart-lifting aspects of an early Spring. I eat it fresh, in salads, in cooked dishes, as pesto, or soup. By the summer, it is gone again. I love having wild garlic later in the year but I can’t dry it like most other plants, as it loses it flavour and those ethereal sulphur tones! Freezing it in bags just leaves a defrosted slightly slimy mess. So I have a couple of options: making a wild garlic pesto or fermenting the wild garlic.
Fermenting wild garlic

Fermented Wild Garlic

There are different methods.Some people like to add salt to their vegetables, crush them and allow their own juices to do all the fermenting. I am often short for time, or tired at the end of a day’s foraging and just want to put my feet up when I still have baskets of foraged goodies to clean or stash. So I am drawn to methods that are quick, simple and easy to do, without compromising on taste! For wild garlic, I use the brine method.

To do this I make a 2% brine. Basically that is 20g of salt to 1 litre of filtered water.

I chop and prepare the garlic, adding a lot of flower buds, white stem, and only a little of the darker green leaf. The I pack it tightly into a clean preserving jar and pour the brine over until it covers the contents. Then I put a glass over the mouth to weight down the green stuff, to make sure everything is below the surface of the brine.

I then leave it in a cool place and wait for the bubbles! After a day or two you will realise that there is a strong smell of sulphur being emitted from your jar. Don’t worry. This is part of the transformation, just apologise to visitors to your home!

Fermenting wild garlic

These are ready to eat in about 2 weeks.

Sometimes, to get a stronger flavoured ferment, I will just soak in the brine for 24 hours. Then I’ll drain it and press it under it’s own juices and let it ferment in its own juices which have been released by the salty brine.

Occasionally I’ll add garlic… or chillies. There are no rules!

If you’re interested in fermenting, consider investing in Sandor Katz’s book ‘The Art of Fermentation’. If you have this, you’ll never need another book.

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Meadow Woundwort in the Field!

mosquito

Posted on by Monica Wilde

Recently I got bitten yet again. Not by horseflies this time, but some mosquitoes. Sadly I reacted in just the same way. About 27 years ago, I was bitten by a large centipede while living in the West Indies – the joke shop kind, huge and shiny – and had an awful infection with my entire arm swelling up, resulting in minor surgery to drain it. Ever since then some (previously tolerated) insects can give me the most awful bites. These mosquitoes, that waylaid me during an evening foraging walk, weren’t even very big. However by the next morning my calf (2 bites) was massively swollen and I also had a huge lump on my forearm that looked like a second elbow! And, as with horseflies bites, I felt fluey, weak and the pain was intense.

My normal treatment is a blend of nettle, chickweed and wood betony tinctures taken internally with chickweed tincture held against the bites with a gauze pad. But this time, there was none in the house. Chickweed I could pick down by the old shed where it likes to grow – it is a cooling, soothing herb used where there is heat and redness in the body (eczema, nappy rash, etc.). Nettles I could also pick – they trigger the body to produce antihistamine so are great for allergic reactions, hay fever and eczema outbreaks. But wood betony (Stachys officinalis) – for the pain – I had no idea.

A friend of mine thought he’d seen viper’s bugloss (Echium vulgare) growing near a local stream and, as this is used to treat poisonous bites, I thought I’d go and look for some. However, there was none there. Walking back though I spied some marsh woundwort growing among the swamp grass.


Marsh woundwort is Stachy palustris and so related to wood betony (Stachy officinalis). By this time my leg was so painful it was a struggle to walk, so I collected about 8 of the plants and set off home where I cut the top two thirds into a saucepan, covered them with water, brought it all to the boil and simmered it for five minutes.

Marsh woundwort has quite a strong unpleasant smell so I was surprised how tasty the tea was. Very similar to the taste of nettle – mind you, its relative hedge woundwort (Stachys sylvatica) is sometimes called hedge nettle. I put a touch of honey in and drank a mugful. I also soaked some gauze pads in cold woundwort tea and wrapped them into place with a gauze bandage. Within 15 minutes of drinking the first mug, the pain started to abate and the swelling lessened. The effect lasts for about 5 hours between mugs.

So I can truly recommend marsh woundwort tea for managing pain and allergic reactions with inflammation.

In medieval times, it was considered one of the most valuable herbs. Used directly on wounds as a poultice to heal them, as an ointment for grout and joint pain, and also used internally for cramp and vertigo as well as internal bleeding (haemorrhages, dysentery, etc.). Modern herbalists use it for its antispasmodic properties to treat painful cramps such as menstrual cramps. Like betony, it probably has a sedative effect on the central nervous system and is useful for managing pain. Likely alkaloids are betonicine, stachydrine and trigonelline.

There is a lot of research on stachydrine. It has cardio protective benefits but has also been found to prevent the deterioration of endothelial cells (the cells that line our blood vessels and lymph system) caused by high-blood sugar levels in diabetics.

Trigonelline has been identified as a potential anti diabetic treatment (Rios et al., 2015). Trigonelline also protects cells from H2O2 damage and could be useful for treatment of oxidative stress mediated cardiovascular diseases in future (Ilavenil et al., 2015).

I live in a field in West Lothian. 4 wild acres where I am planting and encouraging medicinal and foraging species. I have been fascinated by herbs and plants since childhood. My original interest was sparked by a wild childhood in Kenya, where I was introduced to herbal medicine by a local Kikuyu herbalist at the age of six. We were outdoors most of the time and I remember with joy the freedom of those early years. I love foraging for wild food as well as wild medicine and would happily never visit a supermarket again.

Monica Wilde photo

For the latest on events and courses please visit Monica on www.monicawilde.com

Also on twitter.com/monicawilde
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Wild Food Winter Salads

Posted on by Monica Wilde

It’s been so mild this November that there are still lots of wild salad plants around. This salad bowl is made up of chickweed, bitter cress and wild brassica flowers with a rapeseed oil and soy sauce dressing.

 

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I live in a field in West Lothian. 4 wild acres where I am planting and encouraging medicinal and foraging species. I have been fascinated by herbs and plants since childhood. My original interest was sparked by a wild childhood in Kenya, where I was introduced to herbal medicine by a local Kikuyu herbalist at the age of six. We were outdoors most of the time and I remember with joy the freedom of those early years. I love foraging for wild food as well as wild medicine and would happily never visit a supermarket again.

Monica Wilde photo

For the latest on events and courses please visit Monica on www.monicawilde.com

Also on twitter.com/monicawilde
facebook.com/monicawilde
linkedin.com

GARLIC DRESSING

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Wild Garlic Salad Dressing

Posted on April 25, 2014 by Monica Wilde

This is a lovely dressing that goes well with a mixed leaf salad such as dandelion leaves, chickweed, sorrel and wild garlic leaf.

1 tablespoon finely chopped wild garlic stalks, buds and flowers.
1/4 cup (60ml) extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon crushed sea salt
1/4 teaspoon white sugar

The first step is not entirely necessary but does make for a more ‘garlicky’ flavour.
1. Warm the oil and pour over the wild garlic in a small glass mixing bowl. Leave to infuse for an hour (or two or three!).
2. Start whisking the oil with chopped wild garlic, salt & sugar and drizzle in the lemon juice, whisking all the time.
3. It should elmusify so that the oil and lemon juice do not separate.
4. Sprinkle the dressing over your salad. Enjoy!