Well, it’s a Recipe

 I wanted to share a recipe that my daughter, Lissa made.

I’ve been wanting to do an herbalism course with her for a while, but couldn’t afford to. Recently, I found out about a kit from learningherbs.com which was within my price range. It is a perfect beginning, with four easy projects to do and just about everything you need in the box.

Today’s lesson was making an herbal salve. Olive oil was one of the few things not included, but we found some really good stuff at our local bent and dent grocery. *Love* that place!

We measured out 12oz of olive oil.

Lissa began warming the oil in a saucepan and added the packet of herbs that came with the kit. (It includes calendula, comfrey, plantain, and st. john’s wort.)

We found it hard to keep the oil from coming to a simmer without stirring it almost constantly. Lissa got a stool to sit on, but it was still a long time. We should look for a double boiler for next time.

After an hour of keeping the oil and herb mixture warm, Lissa poured it through a fine mesh strainer into a bowl.

She pressed the herbs with her stirring stick to try to get all the oil out of them.

Before continuing, Lissa took the leftover herbs out to the compost and washed and dried the saucepan thoroughly. I put away the camera while she was doing this. Which turned out to be a mistake.

I forgot to get a picture of the beeswax either before, or during the melting. Oh well. This packet used to hold one ounce of beeswax. LOL

After the wax was melted, we made our second mistake and forgot that we were supposed to measure exactly 8oz of the herb infused oil. Oh dear! We poured the whole thing into the melted wax before we realized our mistake. Not much could be done about it so we pressed on.

All the tins and jars came with the kit. Lissa carefully filled each one. We had extra liquid because of our mistake, so we used a one cup mason jar to hold the leftover salve. A few drops of lavender essential oil were added to each container.

I wasn’t sure if it would set up properly because of the extra oil, but it turned out beautifully! Apparently the recipe is more forgiving than I expected.

We are already planning to do this again with herbs we can find and dry from our own land.