Outside

To know the paleness of the sky at dawn. To watch a storm build on the horizon and smell a rain before it hits your face. To be bug-bitten and scratched raw by scrub oak.

To stand in a grove of ancient trees and to feel profoundly that you are very small and very new on this earth. To feel a river wash over your feet. To ride the heaving arc of a wave.

To lie in a field or in your own backyard and watch the tiniest of creatures scale a blade of grass. To summit great columns of granite or walk a carpet of pine needles to the crest of a ridge.

To draw a breath of air that does not feel shared but feels new, pure, like the first breath you have taken in so long.

To stare at a night sky until perception of depth loosens, and it seems the black punctuates the light and not the other way around. To know the smell of a place, the light of it, the sounds that rise in the deepening dark.When you are anxious, when you are fearful, when you are lost, to move outdoors is the best medicine.

Homemade Sugar Scrub

The other day I was listening to this, and dancing around the kitchen while making, for the thousandth time, a tried and true Dorie Greenspan recipe for rosemary-shortbread cookies. There is an instruction in the recipe to "rub the sugar with the rosemary until moist and aromatic." This is my favorite step because the sugar does become just that--moist and aromatic. I lift my hands out of the bowl and if I close my eyes I could just as easily be standing on a sunny hill in Tuscany surrounded by flowering rosemary bushes.  While dancing-myself-clean around the kitchen I realized that my hands were not only delicious smelling but silky smooth. I had just gotten a lovely little exfoliation for my kitchen-worn, climbing-worn hands. This is the (duh) light bulb moment. Why buy chemical filled body scrubs at the pharmacy when I could so easily make my own from my pantry staples? So that is what I did. If you don't have rosemary growing in your backyard or if you don't care for the smell or if you want body scrub that will last indefinitely, you can replace the fresh herb with a few drops of your favorite essential oil.

What does scrubbing your skin have to with wellness, you might ask? Skin is the body's largest organ. Through sweat the skin gets rid of excess water, minerals and salts, constantly helping the body detoxify. Skin cells form at the lowest level of the epidermis and gradually make their way to the top where they die and fall off. Exfoliating helps slough off the dead cells and keeps the pores clean and open so they can do their job. Exfoliation also helps improve circulation which helps stimulate cell renewal. And, of course, it makes your skin glow and makes it feel extra soft which is always nice.

This scrub is relatively abrasive so I wouldn't use it more than once a week. You could also opt to use it on just your knees and elbows which are often the roughest patches of skin on the body. Scrub away, and enjoy. Some other time I will get into the virtues of having solo dance parties in your kitchen.

Rosemary Sugar Scrub

1 cup sugar

1/8-1/4 cup fresh rosemary, finely chopped

1/4 cup olive oil (or coconut or other high quality oil)

Pour the sugar and chopped rosemary into a bowl and rub with your hands until the sugar is moist and aromatic. About 5 minutes (longer if the aroma is helping you fantasize about being somewhere other than your kitchen). Stir in the olive oil and mix until everything is well combined. Put in a jar or container with a tight fitting lid and store in your shower.

Rosemary Tea, Beating the Summer Blues

I wrote off Rosemary long ago. As a culinary herb I always thought of it as overpowering and old fashioned. I associated it with mediocre restaurant potatoes in all their forms: gluey, under-salted and mashed; dry, under-salted and roasted; boiled, under-salted and swimming in a floury, rosemary-flecked "au jus". Even in its fresh form in neat, rail straight, supermarket bundles it never appealed.

Then I moved from Maine to northern California and so began my romance with rosemary. The bush grows everywhere here, in gnarled unkempt hedges, weaving under and around whatever else dares to plant roots near by, and in thick orderly rows in front yards and back yards. I have fallen in love with the plant and its intoxicating scent, its purple blooms in the late winter, and its hardiness, its persistence and presence in all of the "seasons" we experience here.

I was delighted, then, to discover while reading the amazing book Whole Foods Companion, that rosemary is one of the most powerful medicinal herbs you can find. Most notably, it is said to alleviate depression, generally improve mood, and eliminate negativity of all kinds. I mean, who can't use a little negativity elimination from time to time? I love summer. But as the heat cranks up in wine country, so do the crowds of tourists, so do the social demands, and so do the work hours. So while it may seem counterintuitive to get seasonal blues when the sun is out and the tan is on, I have been finding myself in need of a little extra pick me up, a little positivity, and something to cool and to bolster.

                        

Rosemary plants for sale outside of the Green String Farmstand

Rosemary tea is easy to make. Put a few sprigs in a covered glass jar and leave it out in the sun all day, or throw the herb into a pot of just boiled water, let it steep, and drink up. Lately, as the temperature creeps up above 100 degrees here, I have been brewing it strong, storing it in large bottles in the fridge, and drinking it over ice with some fresh mint muddled in the bottom.

Other Benefits of Rosemary
-Stimulates memory, helps overcome mental fatigue & opens the conscious mind
-Improves liver & gall function
-Improves circulation
-Strengthens & tones the stomach muscles
-Can be used topically to help with skin conditions or in a bath to speed recovery of slow healing wounds
-The tea can be used as a hair wash to stimulate growth, detangle, and treat dandruff

Iced Rosemary Tea (stove brew) 

makes 4 servings (you can drink this all day long for ongoing benefits) 

3 or 4 good size sprigs of fresh rosemary, rinsed

4 cups of water

fresh mint (optional)

honey or light agave to sweeten (optional)

Bring 4 cups of water to boil. Turn water off, add rosemary sprigs, cover and let steep at least 10 minutes. The longer you steep, the greater the medicinal value as more essential oil transfers from the leaves into the tea. * Drink hot or chill in a glass or metal bottle in the fridge. Bruise, tear or muddle the mint leaves and drop in the bottom of glass. Add ice and sweetener if desired, pour chilled tea into glass and drink up!

*note: the stronger the tea gets, the pinker it becomes. It will take on a more medicinal taste as it gets stronger but it can always be diluted with cold or hot water, lemon juice, soda water, or another herbal tea.

Source for claims on medicinal uses and benefits of rosemary:
Onstad, Dianne. Whole Foods Companion. Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2004. Originally printed in 1992.