MyHerbCorner

Posts Tagged ‘aniseed’

There is an endless use of herb powders like spices in the kitchen or the well known wound powder as well as baby powder.

I already mentioned yarrow (Achillea millefolium) powder in my previous post and like to add here some other wound powders.

A wound powder which is preventing infections to open wounds is skin healer calendula (Calendula officinalis) flower and leaf. Grind dried herb like shown in the previous post and fill into an empty dry jar.
If you combine yarrow powder and calendula powder you got a powerful wound medicine.
Make different powders by combining different amounts of each herb.
Say for a blood stopping anti-infection powder take 2 parts yarrow and one part calendula.
For wounds with less bleeding use 2 parts calendula and 1 part yarrow.

Another magical powder is clove (Syzygium aromaticum)
You might know this nasty cuts you can get from paper. Just stick your finger into clove powder and the pain will be gone. Clove powder acts anesthetic and antibacterial.

A helpful powder against infected skin conditions such as boils or weeping, infected eczema is the purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea)
Grind dried root and fill into a jar. This powder can also be used as umbilical powder for babies.

For internal use herbs are also grounded and filled into capsules or just blended with honey, yogurt or mixed into finished meals.
Some people also use the soft part of fresh baked bread and knead it with herb powder, then form small balls or tablets which can be dried (guess this is easy and convinient instead of gelatine capsules)

Taking freshly ground powder is a good source of plant medicine if people are not able to take a high amount of herb medicine in infusion or tea form, as well as refusing to take alcohol tincture or vinegar.

Since the capsule or powder mixed with honey or other things goes through the digestive tract, this can be very helpful in problems of the digestive tract.

A carminative powder (this relieves flatulence, digestive colic and gastric discomforts) can be made by grinding carminative herbs like caraway (Carum carvi), fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) or others and using after or before meal (1 tsp in yogurt or other source like mentioned above)

A lovely carminative mixture contains 2 parts peppermint (Mentha piperita) leaves, 1 part aniseed (Pimpinella anisum), 1 part fennel (Foeniculum vulgare)
Grind peppermint by it self and blend then with the powdered seeds which can be pestled together.

Mucilage herbs like marshmallow (Althea officinalis) can be used for stomach linen problems since it is soothing to inflammation.
Marshmallow root powder can also be mixed with honey and taken to sooth a sore throat or cough.

From the book ‘Herbal medicine’ by Dian Dincin Buchman I learned to make an ‘Antinausea powder’ which can also be used by weak digestion.

Antinausea powder:
3 small thin sticks or one big stick cinnamon bark
8 cardamon seeds
1 medium nutmeg
Grind all together and give into a jar. Use 1/4 tsp for an adult or a tiny pinch for a child when feeling sick.

Powdered herbs make also a fine tooth powder and you can find a few recipes here.

And in the kitchen you can use powdered herbs not only as spice, but also for herbal salts.
Click here for some recipes.

Hope you find a good mortar and have fun by pestle your own medicine

My children have holidays, so we have a lot of fun together

Today we made ‘blueberry muffins‘ and ‘crunchy aniseed’ (please click here for the recipe)

The ‘aniseed crunchy‘ are so delicious we would like to eat the whole tray at once!

… the most delicious Aniseed-men!

Since I am working closely with aniseed for a month, I thought to bake gingerbread-men with aniseed instead of ginger and other spices.
They turned out very tasty!

To make them healthy without sugar icing, I copied Aileen’s idea to make faces. Please click here for the link

David helped me to brush with milk while I carved the expressions. We had a great time on this rainy day.
Next time I will add one tablespoon aniseed instead of a teaspoon. I was a bit cautious since I have not enough experience with this herb…

… but that will change quickly

Wow!
I never thought it could be so difficult to get aniseed (Pimpinella anisum) in New Zealand!
In Austria (Europe) you can buy it in every supermarket but here I found non.

After the grocery stores my Odyssey began on the web, where I was too late for some Trademe seeds.
Then I found aniseed from the garden supplier Kingseeds… 250 seeds for $2.50
Yeah, I really really wanted this herb.

My dear husband also helped me by searching in Wellington and found some aniseed!
Our health store had grounded aniseed… well, better then nothing.

And yippee! After another web search I found out that Nut store also has aniseed! Whole! 100g for $6!

So today we were able to make some Digestive biscuits. This is a recipe I chose from my study book.
David and Aileen helped me to make this goodies and as you can see, they are really into it

The delicious biscuits are crunchy and even picky Aileen ate some!

The whole family likes them… even without digestive problems