Herbal Novel Fun

I recently read a novel, Thyme of Death by Susan Wittig Albert. It was a really fun mystery-type piece with the twist that she had dropped out of practicing law to start her own herbal shop. So there were little herb references throughout the book. I tried to mark the pages whenever I saw an herbal reference and then typed them up for our blog :). Just for fun...

“The herbs she ordered, tincture of Echinacea and goldenseal to treat a cat’s ears mites, and the tincture of marigold and myrrh that she uses to fight her foot fungus.”

“A lot of people ask me why I got out of law and into herbs. I have a stock answer: plants don’t argue. They don’t lie, cheat, connive, or hit below the belt.”

“Dill is wonderful, but it’s terribly invasive. If I let it go to seed, it’s everywhere. I can visualize the whole world, dilled.”

“I cooked the garlic the way I usually do, by putting a couple of cloves into the skillet with the onion I was sautéing. When the onion’s done, I use a fork to mash the cloves. Too many people make the mistake of mincing the garlic first, which makes for burned garlic and a bitter-tasting dish.”

“At nine I propped open the front door of my shop with the stone figure of Haumea, the Hawaiian goddess of wild plants”

“I have high blood pressure and an ulcer… and the garlic helps both… The world’s oldest medical text, the Ebers Papyrus, lists garlic as an ingredient in twenty-two remedies for headache, insect and scorpion bites, menstrual difficulties, worms, tumors, and heart ailments.”

“Healing herbs work gently and reliably, but I hate it when people think they’re a miracle cure. I always try to make them understand that herbs work more slowly than modern medicine’s silver bullets.”

“I tucked a sprig of rosemary behind the pin, for remembrance..." (before a funeral)

“My Hispanic customers buy epazote to flavor their ethnic dishes”

“I climbed into a hot bath laced with sweet almond and lemon grass oil.”

“Valerian smells like a locker room. It should be stored in a tighly lidded container, away from anything that absorbs odor. Away from cats, too. Most cats think it’s even sexier than catnip, and go moderately bananas over it. But valerian is a strong natural sedative, loaded with something called valepotriates that relax muscles, calm nervous energy, and release tension.”

“The sack of valerian… Steep it for five minutes in water that’s just off the boil”