Kami McBride - Herbal Kitchen, The: 50 Easy-to-Find Herbs and Over 250 Recipes to Bring Lasting Health to You and Your Family

Thanks, Kami, for keeping grandma's old-fashioned remedies and recipes alive with an easy, unintimidating plan for making herbs a part of everyday life.

Elise Collins, author An A-Z Guide to Healing Foods and Chakra Tonics

The Herbal Kitchen is a beautifully written guide to expanding your herbal repertoire. This is a book that can bring more fun, flavor, and health into your life.

Brigitte Mars, author of Rawsome! and The Desktop Guide to Herbal Medicine

Wow! I learned a lot from The Herbal Kitchen and I'm keeping it in my kitchen so I can refer to it often. I love this book!

Christiane Northrup, MD, author of the New York Times bestsellers: Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom and The Wisdom of Menopause

The Herbal Kitchen is a breath of fresh air and more. It is full of simple and convenient tips to transform weeds and waste into exotic and nourishing culinary delights.

Margaret Beeson, naturopathic physician

Finally, a cookbook for using herbs! If you've ever cooked with herbs, made herbal tea, eaten pesto with basil (or edible flowers as Kami suggests) you will love this book. If not, you need this book. The Herbal Kitchen is the most extensive list of recipes using herbs you will find anywhere. Your food becomes your medicine, as it has always been, and through the gift of Kami McBride's recipes, this ancient usage of herbs remains alive.

Pam Montgomery, herbalist, educator, and author of Plant Spirit Healing and Partner Earth; A Spiritual Ecology

No kitchen is complete without the treasure trove of botanical wisdom found in this wonderful book!

Deanna Minich, PhD, CN, nutritionist and author of Chakra Foods for Optimum Health, An A - Z Guide to Food Additives, and Quantum Supplements

The Herbal Kitchen is a tremendous resource. Everything you ever wanted to know about the healing power of herbs and spices are nicely tucked within these pages. This is a must-have book for everyone's kitchen!

Rebecca Katz, MS, author of The Cancer-Fighting Kitchen: Big Flavor Recipes for Cancer Treatment and Recovery

First published in 2010 by Conari Press

An imprint of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

With offices at:

500 Third Street, Suite 230

San Francisco, CA 94107

www.redwheelweiser.com

Copyright 2010 by Kami McBride.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages.

ISBN: 978-1-57324-421-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on request.

Typeset in Adobe Caslon, Berliner Text and Hoefler Text.

Cover illustration composite Dover and dreamstime.com.

Interior illustrations: pages 31, 33, 34, 36, 38, 39, 41, 44, 46, 47, 50, 52, 54, 56, 60, 63, 65, 66, 68, 70, 71, 73, 75, 78, 82, 83, 85, 86, 88, 93, 94, 97, 101, 104, 106, 108, 186 Dover; pages 15, 29, 89, 99, 110, 113, 128, 138, 152, 168, 185, 197, 207, 218, 231 dreamstime.com; pages 30, 63, 91 courtesy of CLKR; page 80 Getty.

Author photograph Michael Conyers.

Manufactured in Canada

TCP

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials

Z39.48-1992 (R1997).

This book is dedicated to my mother. Her never-ending love and support inspired me to follow my heart.

Thank you to Red Wheel Weiser and Conari Press for helping me to make this book a reality. Thank you to all my teachers who have helped guide and inspire my work and life. I am very grateful to everyone who has participated in my classes over the years; being with all of you has shaped and given an immeasurable depth to my life. Thank you to everyone who has been a part of this wonderful journey learning about plants. I am forever grateful for the beauty and mystery of plants and how they continue to be such extraordinary teachers. My wish is that these pages benefit and bring health to all.

Herbalism and herb books have become quite the hot topic these past few years, and there are herb books on any subject one could imagine exploring the broad territory that herbalism embraces. Quite the change from only a few years back, when one would want books on herbs and herbal healing and find they were far and few between. Today, quite thankfully, my library shelves are heavily stacked with books on plant spirit medicine, wild crafting and identification, herbal healing and herb lore, the latest most popular herbs, using herbs with drugs and medication and contraindications, and herbal medicine as a clinical practice. You name it, big book or small, colorfully laid out or plainly printed, each herb book holds at least a few gems and often many about this intriguing field of study that I have been impassioned with for most of my life. But few touch my heart the way Kami McBride's The Herbal Kitchen does. It embraces all that I love most about this ancient healing tradition and reminds me of how necessary our relationship to plants is in our world today.

Herbs and spices are a gift from nature. We are nature and the plants have an affinity with our bodies...they are our allies. (from The Herbal Kitchen)

In The Herbal Kitchen sits the rich green heart of herbalism in all its abundance, simplicity, and practicality. Medicines are made, recipes exchanged, and wise adages passed along to the reader. One can almost smell the flowers, taste the cup of tea in hand, so homespun and real are the teachings that Kami shares. She artfully guides us through garden and field ripe with earth's abundance, then leads us back into the heart of the household, the earthy abode of the kitchen. There, amidst pots and pans, herb jars, and baskets overflowing with the lush harvest of fragrant plants, all that is best about the tradition of herbal healing comes forth, as Kami generously shares not only recipe and remedy, but wisdom passed down through time.

With the simplest of ingredients and always an eye for what is practical and doable, Kami guides us to create recipes for health and healing and weaves the magic and power of herbs back into our daily lives. Every recipe embraces that wise old adage, food is our best medicine. Within the limitless range of the kitchen lies the pathway to wellness. As Kami makes obvious, this is a book about reclaiming the art of using herbs in our daily food routines and developing a deeper understanding of our relationship between food and wellness.

The culture of our kitchen environment is the space we create to nurture and care for ourselves and our families....

But this is far more than just a book of recipes and remedies. Kami embraces all that's real and honest, traditional and practical, about the green world, and she generously, with spice and vigor, offers her warm insights for all of us to savor. It's sweetly delicious, like the elderberry syrup, Rose Delight Honey, and Benedictine liqueur, (recipes she shares along with the stories that accompany them). One can feel the grandmothers with her, guiding her, whispering their ancient wisdom and infusing it into the very teachings that Kami shares so warmly with us. Perhaps that is one of the reasons I love this book so much; it offers a sweet antidote to the sometimes stale modernism of so many herb books written today. In Kami's