The Sweet Herbal Blog Party

Each month herbalists are encouraged to submit articles to the Herbal Blog Parties, hosted by various herbalists.  The August party had as its theme sweet ways to use herbs, including herbal honey’s, glycerites, elixirs, electuaries, melomels and the like.  If you need definitions, go down to Kiva Rose’s article which has an overview.

Kiva's Wild Rose Tincture

While we generally want to keep sugars low in our diet, there are legitimate uses for sweet herbs.  Sugar in its various forms is used in a variety of traditional medicines.  In Chinese medicine it strengthens the Spleen/pancreas function (in judicious quantities) and formulas often use dates, honey, longan fruit, or licorice to engage the digestive function.  Ayurveda makes medicinal honey and ghee preparations like Chayawanprash.
Rock sugar, jaggery, palm sugar, dates, honey and a variety of fruits are used traditionally.  White sugar is one of the least desirable forms, being stripped of minerals and adding nothing but carbohydrates.  Even worse is high fructose corn syrup which prevents your self-regulation of food intake.  But fear not, you don’t need them here.  Happy and sweet reading!

Sarah Head of Tales of a Kitchen Herbwife had given us an excellent overview of many sweet medicines, complete with a whole slew of yummy and often ingenious recipes.

Susan of Farm at Coventry has a gorgeous post on Exploring the Electuary.

Kiva Rose’s post on Sweet Medicine covers a wide variety of herbal Elixirs, Cordials, Oxymels, Infused Wines and many other treats.

Karen Vaughan talks about sweet medicine in her excellent monograph of  Turmeric.

The infamous Henriette has posted a summary of her favorite past posts on sweet medicines, including a lovely one on spruce shoot syrup that I’m very fond of.

Cory’s Aquarian Bath blog explores the many benefits of Garlic Honey.

Goddess Garden Healing writes about syrups, and shares a very delicious sounding Elder Rose Syrup recipe.

Darcey Blue has given us a fascinating look at what the sweet taste really means in traditional medicine and what its healing properties are, in addition to a wonderful recipe for her Sweet Melissa Divine honey.

Lady Barbara’s Garden shares a wonderful way of immersing ourselves in the magic of sweet medicine, all night long!

Rosalee of Methow Valley Herbs talks about her delightful journey with the multi-faceted medicine of Chamomile.

Kristine of Dancing in a Field of Tansy gives a great overview of syrups, complete with a recipe and insights into using specific herbs for the syrups.

Green Man Ramblings offers an intuitive look at how glycerin can bring out the traditional divinatory aspects of Yarrow.

Giuli of the rewilding/bioregional blog, Toby’s People, shared her introductory thoughts about and inspirations for working with herbal honeys.

Amanda writes about a non-edible, but still very sweet medicine in her post on herbal creams.

Yael of dirttime.org discusses different ways of preserving the growing season’s bounty.

The lovely Kristena of Dreamseeds generously shares her adventures with Wild Hyssop with us.

Ananda tops it all off with a beautiful post on sensual Sweet Oil, mmmm.