Crocker - The Herbalists Kitchen: Cooking and Healing with Herbs

To my dear friends, the humble plants that offer comfort, pleasure and health and to the gentle, caring souls who raise them, harvest, share, and enjoy their gifts.

My life has been blessed in ways that I cannot begin to fully understand or explain. The interesting twists and sidesteps along the way have come about not least because of an exquisite dance with humble, helping plants, which enrich our lives in myriad ways yet grow almost without our intervention.

Knowing so many gentle gardeners, people with the earth at their fingertips, I am so often reminded of a line from biblical text, But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace (Psalm 37:11). Ive come to appreciate and understand the earthly and spiritual sanctuaries that are gardens. Ive also glimpsed the serenity and peace that plants can bring, and I see that knowledge and use of these unassuming plants is and will continue to be a contributing factor to a healthy, sustainable existence.

I began my lifelong pirouette with herbs with an introductory course at Black Creek Pioneer Village (an 1800s village with period gardens, buildings, and artifacts) in Toronto and at Montgomerys Inn and Community Museum. From that time forward, Ive lived, learned, and witnessed the magic of rosemary and comfrey and sage and thyme (to name just a few) on my familys and my own health and well-being. My herb gardens continue to flower and fade and reappear in harmony with the eternal seasonal symphony.

To the best of my knowledge I am the first person to call myself a culinary herbalist. Once I began to speak about herbs, I needed a moniker, a slot into which people could easily slide my work, my qualifications, and me.

My perspective is different from that of a medical herbalist. Whereas a traditional herbalist has studied for several years under a recognized master or at an accredited institution, I have learned the basics of herbal medicine so that I can use their healing attributes in food.

I am a foodie, a home economist (BAA) by training, with a passion for and an insatiable interest in healthy food, herbs, and nourishing plants. It is known that from the earliest times in human history, people gathered more than one hundred different plant species for consumption over the course of a year. As a culinary herbalist, I use healing herbs in the way the ancients did: by eating them raw and cooking with them in daily meals. I believe that if we can bring our diet closer to that of our ancient ancestors, our bodies will throw off the modern diseases that have come with processing, refining, and adulteration and the systematic decline of fresh fruits, vegetables, and herbs from our diet.

In The Herbalists Kitchen, I approach the tremendous body of herbal information with profound respect, realizing that with every tiny bit of knowledge gained, there is so much more to discover. My profound thanks go out again to my guides and teachers along the garden path.

The Herbalists Kitchen is actually two books in one. First and foremost, it is a cookbook, so the recipe index lists the recipes as they would be used in a meal. If you are looking for an herbal appetizer or dessert, or any recipe for a course in between, you can see it all at a glance.

Its also an herbal. An herbal (from the medieval Latin liber herbalis) is a book of herbs, herbs being the common word for plants. Historically, herbals illustrated and recorded the popular medicinal uses of plants. Like those early, handwritten parchment scrolls, this contemporary herbal offers a comprehensive guide to the traditional culinary, medicinal, and cosmetic use of herbs backed up by science. This means that for gardeners and herb practitioners, the book is organized around the individual plants. As any herb grower can attest, when the herbs are ready for harvesting, recipes for using those specific plants had better be at hand. And so the herbs take pride of placein fact, they direct the structure of the bookand they are profiled in alphabetical order, commanding their own table of contents by herb.

Every herb writer or blogger, botanist, herb gardener, cook, natural-health practitioner, aromatherapist, landscape architect, herbal cosmetician, herbaceous, but it also includes trees, shrubs, annuals, vines, and more primitive plants, such as ferns, mosses, algae, lichens and fungi.

I define herbs not by their botanical makeup, but by their ability to offer a specific use to humans. In my definition, a plant (or its parts) may be considered an herb if it is used in its fresh or dried form for one or more of the following:

* As a flavoring, ingredient, or garnish in food or beverages

* In a medicinal or personal care preparation

* For fragrance in perfumes, cosmetics, food, or drinks

* As a preservative or a pest deterrent

* As a dye for food or fabrics

* As an edible ornamental or landscaping plant

* In crafts or household cleaners

According to my broad definition, all spices are herbs, but not all herbs are spices. There is a lingering perception that spices are mysterious, expensive, and come from exotic lands. For that reason spices are usually perceived to be more valuable than herbs, which anyone can grow. I do consider spices to be herbs because they meet my earlier criteria; however, I use the term