The problem now is that there are still plenty left over and that expiry date is fast approaching. If that is the case, I hope this post will give you some ideas for using your cinnamon in some creative ways.

Photo credit: Kim Martel

Cooking

In baking, cinnamon can be used to flavour cakes, cookies, cinnamon rolls or blended with raisins to make a tasty sweet bread.

Cinnamon goes really well with apples, bananas, chocolate, coffee, egg dishes, lamb, pears, rice, almonds, apricots and pumpkins.

It’s also lovely sprinkled onto breakfast cereal, yoghurt or bananas on toast, just don’t go overboard with it and make sure you blend it in a bit otherwise you’ll end up coughing as the powder is very fine.

Use cinnamon sticks to stir hot chocolate or coffee or other drinks that you want to add a hint of cinnamon flavour to. It’s nice added to a hot milky slippery elm drink to soothe the stomach.

Cinnamon added to crab apple or redcurrant jelly is also good.

There are some more ideas here:

How to use Cinnamon in your meals

Make your own mulled wine

Cinnamon flavoured sugar is simple to make but if you want to buy it ready made, you can get it from Steenbergs here.

Cinnamon blends well with cloves, cumin, ginger, nutmeg and mace, turmeric, cardamom and coriander seed, so use it to make your own mixed spice blend or curry blend.

Crafts

If you have a few out of date spices, break them up, get creative and make a picture like the crazy looking spice girl in the photo above  (made this with my daughters a few years ago). If you’re going to want to keep the picture, glue it onto some card or paper rather than using a plate.

A few cinnamon sticks tied with red ribbon and attached to some mulling spices make a pretty and useful gift.

You can also find out how to use cinnamon powder to create some great cinnamon scented candles here.

If you have any favourite uses for cinnamon, feel free to leave a comment below.

Here’s a few photos of the results and attempts at making them look nice (practicing for gift ideas!).

If anyone knows of a good and reliable recipe, please leave me a comment below. I’d like to have another go but source the ingredients separately.

The Herb Society’s AGM and Conference is being held on 26th to 27th September in Stratford-upon-Avon. The speakers will be James Wong, ethnobotanist and presenter of the BBC’s Grow Your Own Drugs, and Anna Parkinson, BBC journalist and author of Nature’s Alchemist: John Parkinson, Herbalist to Charles I, a book about her ancestor who was born two years earlier than Stratford’s most famous son, William Shakespeare.   James and Anna will focus on herbs Shakespeare would have known, from their different perspectives.   On Sunday 27th there will be a special visit to Hall’s Croft, home of Shakespeare’s daughter Susanna and son-in-law John Hall, which will be led by Sue Minter.

Reduced rate accommodation is available via the herb society’s sponsor, NFU Mutual.   To apply for a place at the AGM/Conference please complete the application which can be downloaded from www.herbsociety.org.uk/downloads/2009-agm.pdf

You will then receive an information pack.   NB:  booking closes 12 September! Contact Gwenneth Raybould at 020 8761 6565 or garden@gbz.demon.co.uk with any queries.

I previously covered how to make rose flavoured sugar and how to make rose flavoured water.
There are some romantic ideas for using rose petals here too.

I also harvested some lavender from my newish english lavender plants and attempted to make a lavender wand which you can see in the photo. Not perfect I know but I quite like seeing the flowers peeking out.

There are plenty of other ideas for using lavender here and instructions for making a lavender wand here and you can see my recipe for lavender biscuits which I recently made and included in my ezine.

I hope you are enjoying some herbal harvests too.

Makes about 25 biscuits

4oz butter

3oz sugar

5oz self-raising flour

1 beaten egg

1 teaspoon of lavender flowers

1 tablespoon of finely chopped fresh lavender leaves

Preheat oven to 180 degrees centigrade. Cream butter and sugar, stir in the egg, flowers, leaves and flour.

Grease two baking sheets and drop spoonfuls of the mixture evenly onto them.

Bake for approx 15 to 20 minutes until golden.

In my herb garden the bees seem to love the following flowering herbs: chives, lavender, thyme, bergamot, borage, feverfew, lamb’s ears, greater celandine, st john’s wort, comfrey, clary sage, roses, oregano, marjoram, white and red clover, evening primrose, rosemary, sage, yarrow, lemon balm and marshmallow.

Bees also like the flowers of betony, bramble, butterbur, catmint, dill, coneflower, eyebright, mullein, lungwort, foxglove, dandelion, cornflower, hollyhock, honeysuckle, nasturtiums, white dead nettle and wall germander to name just a few.

Here are a few photos of herb flowers in my garden that bees like:

This shows from left to right: borage, bergamot and st john’s wort.

Borage, evening primrose, feverfew and dill flowers.

Bee (obviously!) on chive flowers.

Top photo shows Clary sage flower, lower photo shows Lamb’s ears flowers.

Greater Celandine. If you break off one of the leaves or stems you’ll see bright orange sap ooze out; apparently good for treating warts amongst other things but be warned it does stain skin and clothes and may irritate sensitive skin.

How many bees can you see on these oregano flowers? (click image to enlarge)

Apothecary’s rose (Rosa gallica officinalis). This has a wonderful scent and the petals can be used for many things as mentioned in this blog post about how to make rose water and this one about how to make rose flavoured sugar.

If you’re not sure what species of bee you’ve seen, this website will help: http://www.bumblebeeconservation.org.uk/bumblebees_id.htm

]]> http://madaboutherbs.org/bee-friendly-herbs/feed/ http://madaboutherbs.org/bee-friendly-herbs/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/madaboutherbs/MQUM/~3/IFVru3b3Iw8/ http://madaboutherbs.org/angelica/#comments Sun, 21 Jun 2009 12:03:54 +0000 maddles http://madaboutherbs.org/?p=1271 I didn’t have the space to grow this herb where I used to live. I planted this angelica plant in May 2008 (see first photo) and watched in amazement as it grew and grew (mostly this spring) and turned into this huge beautiful architectural plant that is as tall as me! My favourite photo is the last one. I’ll be saving the seeds; there’s plenty of them as you can see. In theory I could have cut the flowering stem in the first few years to stop it going to seed but I was too intrigued to see what it would look like. It is a biennial so it will die off this year.

Anyone got any favourite uses for angelica root, seeds, stems?

Angelica planted out in May 2008

Angelica in March 2009

Look at that lovely fresh green growth

• Herbs are easy to grow, suffer from few pests and diseases and are deocrative but also good to eat with many nutritional benefits!
• Many are perennials, which come up year after year without much work from you and will supply you with many years of beauty and a variety of uses ranging from culinary to medicinal, skincare and crafts and you don’t need masses of space to grow them.
• They create a visual and aromatic feast for your senses. Many herbs have beautiful flowers and wonderful uplifting scents.
• You can use your garden to provide herbs which are really best fresh, e.g basil, chives, marjoram, rosemary, tarragon and thyme, borage, salad burnet, chervil, coriander, scented geraniums, lemon balm, lemon verbena, nasturtiums, savory, sorrel and violets.
• Save money by growing your own culinary herbs and use them to create mouth-watering dishes for you and your family.
• Free herb plants. Once your herbs are established you will be able to propagate your own herbs for your garden or to give away or sell.
• Herbs will attract wildlife: bees, butterflies and other beneficial insects. This means that they can be used for companion planting in your vegetable garden to boost yields, attract beneficial insects and deter pests.
• You can grow your own herbal first aid kit. You could make your own tinctures, infusions, decoctions and salves. Just a few herbs will help you treat yourself for minor ailments, e.g. bites/stings - just rub plantain leaf or basil leaves onto your skin. Gargle with sage tea when you have a sore throat or rinse your mouth with sage tea when you have a mouth ulcer. Sip some fennel or peppermint tea to aid digestion. If you want to make a few remedies, I can recommend the Herbal Medicine Making Kit supplied by Learning Herbs. You can read more about it or purchase it  here or watch this 3 minute video of someone making the salve from the kit here.
• You can make your own skincare products: you’ll be able to make your own infused oils for use in ointments, creams or make your own hair rinses.
• A number of herbs aid digestion e.g. fennel tea, peppermint tea. Chewing on fennel seeds can help reduce appetite if you are trying to lose weight.
• Herbs enhance your health e.g. garlic for the immune system and a heart protector. Lavender, lemon balm or chamomile can help calm or aid sleep when drunk in tea.
• Make your own herbal teas with fresh or dried herbs that you’ve grown.
• Use herbs for your pets to help treat minor ailments.
• Fresh lemon balm leaves make a wonderfully calming tea.
• If you are a cat owner, they’ll love catnip and valerian planted in your garden.
• Make your own herb jellies, vinegars and oils.
• Create your own potpourri.
• Plant beautiful and useful herb containers for you and your friends and family.
• Use cut herb plants or flowers for flower arrangements in the home.
• Relieve stress by gardening; it is a fantastically relaxing and grounding activity.

What have I missed? What’s your favourite uses for herbs/what brings you the most joy?

This blog post is intended to inform and entertain. You should not use herbs in place of your normal medical care or take them with current prescriptions or medicines without first obtaining professional advice by consulting a trained medical practitioner or qualified herbalist. Herbs should not be taken whilst pregnant or breastfeeding without checking with your medical practitioner first.

Contrary to popular belief, growing herbs in a shady area of the garden is possible, some of them will even thrive in it. The list below is an excerpt from my forthcoming e-book.

Here are a few herbs that will tolerate a shady position in the garden:

• Comfrey - this is an invasive herb so choose your spot carefully, it is a very leafy dense herb so good for ground cover. It has lovely flowers too that the bees love. Comfrey is a very versatile and therefore a useful herb to have in the garden or near a vegetable patch.  The leaves can be used as a compost activator and you can also use the leaves to make a good liquid feed although the smell will not be pleasant when brewing!  Leaves left in between rows of vegetables will add nutrients to the soil and also apparently attract slugs away from your crops (haven’t tested this yet). Comfrey leaves have healing properties so are great to have around to use to make comfrey oil or ointments.
• Lemon Balm  and Mints - these will tolerate shade and most mints are also happy in damp shade as well.
• Coriander - The most common problem with this herb is that it goes to seed too quickly, one way of slowing this down (apart from making sure you choose the right variety in the first place) is to grow it in the garden in a shady/semi-shady position.
• Parsley.
• Sweet Woodruff - this one is good for ground cover and has pretty little white flowers in the spring.
• Sweet Violet - usually found growing at the edge of woodland, under hedges or shrubs.
• Lungwort - another pretty plant with speckled leaves and purple/pink flowers (see photo above).
• Wild Strawberry - these will supply you with vanilla flavoured tiny strawberries and send out runners absolutely everywhere!
• Box - a traditional hedging plant.
• Primrose.
• Chives - a useful herb to have.
• Angelica.
• Lily of the Valley - n.b poisonous.
• Sweet Cicely - great with rhubarb to counter acidity and reduce the quantity of sugar needed in recipes.
• Chervil.

Feel free to leave a comment below to let me know what other herbs you have successfully grown in shady conditions.

Last weekend I enjoyed two fabulous days on Aromantic’s Natural Skin Care Courses  which are run by the very knowledgeable owner; Kolbjorn Borseth.  He is a man on a mission to reveal the secrets of how natural cosmetics and skin care products are made, empower you to make your own at home, affordably, ethically and naturally, he provides up to date information on the natural raw materials and aims to help as many people as possible with their different skin conditions and problems. You can find out more from his website here.

I attended the Beginner’s day and Intermediate day. Having learnt so much and being inspired by it all I have even booked myself onto the Advanced Day course in a few months time. There are many more courses that cover specific products or theory in more depth including the cosmetic legal regulations when making your own products to sell.

There is a lot of information to take in during each day and you then realise that you are learning just the basics and that you can go much deeper into the raw material properties, methods used, product variations etc.

The basic format was to learn about the theory first, then make a product in groups (four in each group for this particular course), then a question and answer session was held on that particular product.

On Day One we learnt about the raw materials used in skincare products, then we made creams, shampoo,  aloe vera gel, eye gel and lip balms. We could experiment with different essential oil blends for many of the products.

On Day Two we learnt about various methods of treating eczema including how to balance acid and alkaline foods in our diets to help prevent various ailments/diseases -this was a fascinating topic. We also covered how to use herbs to treat eczema including how to make a compress which was actually demonstrated on one of the course participants who had eczema. We then went on to make two types of cream; one to treat ‘dry’ eczema and one for ‘weepy’ eczema. After lunch, we made face cleansers and face masks using green, red and white clays. We then made two types of eye gel and some hair conditioner.  Phew!

The photos above shows all the different products we made over the two days: shampoo for dry hair, shampoo for oily hair, conditioner, 4 lip balms, aloe vera gel, dry skin cream (2 pots), eye gel, vitamin A cream (for dry eczema), active cream for eczema, green, pink, whie clay face masks, eye gel, chamomile eye gel.

So far I’ve tried out the shampoo and conditioner which were great, the dry skin cream and eye gel and I can’t wait to have a go at making some fizzy bath bombs, liquid soap and lots more!

My aim is to replace all the shop bought toiletries with my own homemade ones, something I’ve been meaning to do for a while now I know even more about some of the potentially damaging/ineffective constituents they contain.

If you’re interested in this topic or want me to post more about this area, feel free to leave a comment below or let me know what in particular you’d like to know/are interested in.