Chives are one of the first herbs to pop through the ground each spring, so it just makes sense that they would be in my first recipe of the year. When the other herbs are just starting to leaf out, chives are already blooming and the lovely purple chive blossoms are delicious!
I use chive blossoms in a lot of different recipes. I make chive blossom butter, I use chive blossoms in salads or as a plate garnish, and I also make chive blossom vinegar. Flavored vinegar's are easy to make and the pretty pink color of the chive blossoms makes for a lovely colored vinegar.
Flavored vinegar's are super easy to make, and once you know how you can come up with lots of different flavor combinations! All you really need to do to make an herb infused vinegar, is pick your herbs and choose a vinegar then put them together and let them marinate a while. Ok, well...maybe there's a little more to it than that! (but not much!)
Unfortunately living on a farm in the woods can be quite painful! There's a lot of manual labor and I often end up with aches and pains, especially when I have to chop wood or shovel snow in the winter. Ugh! Luckily I have a bunch of herbal remedies to turn to help alleviate pain.
However, there does come a time...often in the dead of winter...when I run out of last summer's dried medicinal herbs from the garden. At that point I often turn to the herbs and spices in my kitchen cabinet instead of OTC or prescription remedies for natural pain relief.
I know I'm not the only one who prefers to use natural remedies. A number of pain sufferers are turning to a more natural approach by using the methods of the past to treat the ailments of the present...and some of these herbs have been used for centuries!
Many common spices like cloves or ginger have been used for years to alleviate pain. Others like capsaicin are available widely as pain relievers right now. Here's the list of 7 common herbs and spices that I use for pain relief that should all be available in your grocery store (if you don't already have them in your spice rack!)
Have you ever heard of 4 o'clock flowers? A few years back I was struggling with growing moonflowers and decided to try growing 4 o'clocks instead. They grew perfectly and my love affair with the marbled, multi colored flowers was born!
The 4 O'clock flower, Mirabilis jalapa earned its name because the flowers open around late afternoon each day, and the blooms close and die come morning. Also called Marvel of Peru, these plants were originally cultivated by the Aztecs for medicinal and ornamental uses.
One of the most unique aspects of this plant, is that different colored flowers can grow on the same plant! Flowers can be solid colored or have a combination of two colors in various patterns. The plant can also change colors as it matures. You could plant a yellow flowered Marvel of Peru and months later it can start blooming pink.
While it's often assumed the flowers of the 4 O'clock open in response to daylight, they actually open in response to the daily drop in temperature that happens around 4pm each day.
We currently have one rescue kitten left at our house and the Bengal is not very happy about it! First she peed in the kittens bed. Then she 'marked' the cardboard box the kitten had been playing in. Finally she graduated to spraying anywhere she could smell the kitten. I absolutely can't stand the smell of cat urine so I did my best to clean up all these messes. I literally tried everything to get rid of the cat odor in my house.
I first started cleaning it up with the rug scrubber filled with pet stain & odor remover. That wasn't strong enough so I bought enzymatic pet odor sprays from the pet store. I also tried white vinegar and I tried essential oils. No matter what I used, it only removed the cat pee smell for a few days and then I could smell the cat pee again. I spent way too much money on this stuff! I was completely convinced that nothing but the strongest, most potent, specially made formulas would work.
I was wrong.
I soon found out, I had the solution in my cabinet the whole time....and it wasn't chemical laden crap from the pet store!
Peroxide, baking soda and dish soap. Sound familiar? These are the 3 ingredients in my Best Skunk Spray Remover EVER! recipe. The proportions are a little different, but it works just as well to remove cat urine smell as it does for skunk spray! It's a lot more natural then all the artificial chemicals I was spraying in my house, plus it works better than all the other sprays and cleaners I had bought!
