Herbal honey pills and nothing in general

So I feel like writing a blog post, but find myself with nothing of real interest or herbal merit to write about. Darin says I should write about nothing! LOL!

What have I been up to herbally this week? Well, my entrance exam for the Clinical portion of the program at NAIMH is tomorrow evening, and I start my clinic shifts on Friday mornings at 9 am. Nutrition classes also start this weekend on Saturday, and I've bought 3 of my 4 required texts. One is this really interesting book about the energetics of nutrition therapy/food in a TCM model. I tend to like the Ayurvedic model a bit more than TCM, but hey, I'm willing to learn whatever system works, and studying multiple often makes a more well rounded knowledge base.

I harvested some of the herbs from my garden plot this week. I cut back the rosemary pretty severely and have a nice bunch drying. More hyssop is drying as well. I have sage, parsley and thyme all nice in bundles too, for cooking or medicine making. I'm resisting the temptation to make more tinctures. I'm working really hard on reducing the number of tinctures I have on my shelves, and relying more on traditional preparations of herbs like teas, infusions, decoctions, pastes, powders or syrups. I also really like making honey pills. Honey pills are a convienent ( for the recipient) and hands on way to make medicine. It basically requires powdering your herbs, mixing with a binder ( marshmallow rt powder works well) and just enough honey to make a thick workable dough. You dont really want it to be sticky, but sticky enough to hold its shape when you roll the dough into little round pills. These can be dehydrated in the oven with the light on overnight, or in a dehydrator. Once dry, I store them in a jar with a lid, and they keep indefinately, or until the powdered herbs loose their oopmh. I have a nice jar of ginger fennel pills that I keep handy for any bought of digestive upset. I've most often used it for nausea ( especially the kind that happens when I eat dairy and wake up at midnight nauseas. I stumble to the herb shelf, chew up one pill, and suck on a second as I'm falling back to sleep.) It works a charm. This is great for car sickness too!
Also good for the too full feeling after a big meal, for uncomfortable gas or cramping.

You can also flavor these with tasty things like cocoa or carob powder, or herbal fruits like rosehips or elderberry. Occasionally the addition of a drop of essential oil is nice . Throat lozenges with slippery elm, myhrr, sage, and licorice benefit from a drop of peppermint in the dough.

On other notes, I've been settling into the new place we moved into, and pulling boxes out of storage one by one. It's tedious, but must be done.

It's about bed time now, so I'll leave this for now...but hopefully will have more herb filled posts in the not too distant future!