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Week 13, 14 & 15 of 2024 (In Review) – Easter & April Heatwave
The weeks have flown by and I dropped the ball a little bit, so reviewing the past three weeks: Easter week and the first gorgeous weeks of our current month, April. Truly hope to be on time in about a week from now bringing us current. Man, besides this cold snap Central Europe is undergoing at the moment, haven’t we been so spoiled this year? Easter week was generally uneventful and wholly relaxing – even more so than spring break. I was so pleased that it was our little one’s first time participating in Easter traditions like an Easter egg hunt around the living room on Easter Sunday and his…
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Recipe: Chaga Masala Chai Tea
This past December I was all about ‘dat chai. I was constantly cooking up batches of this delicious, spicy and warming masala chai to enjoy in the evenings mostly, but even in the day time as an alternative to coffee. See… here’s the sad news. I had recently come to the realization that coffee is no friend to me. Maybe one of those frenemies, but not a true friend. I had also been doing a lot of research about healing my hormones and found that I ought to drastically reduce both coffee and processed soy consumption. I’m more of a black tea person anyway, so this wasn’t the worst news,…
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Make Your Own: Lilac Syrup
Some readers know that two years ago I started my journey with studying herbalism (more reasons why I’m doing that on that post) but I decided last month that, given the current world situation, now may be a better time than ever to go past “beginner” and take my studies to the next level with an intermediate course of study. I guess joke’s on me a little bit– hoping I’d get to “enjoy” the lock-down life because despite the pandemic I have been absolutely busy with normal things and really have to try hard (between work, cooking, garden, the necessary relaxation necessary to enjoy life) to study three subjects again……
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Mushroom Foraging on St. Wenceslas Day
“Our Czech forests are overflowing with mushrooms.” — an actual line from a local news report St. Wenceslas Day (Sv. Václav) is one of my favorite Czech holidays. It’s right after the official turn to autumn, the school year’s right about to get into the usual swing except for this last holiday weekend to enjoy the simpler things about the start of the season. Normally, I like to visit some sort of happening to watch folk-dancing, browse the craft markets, have a glass of wine or if I’m lucky, burčák (Federweisser aka “fermented alcoholic grape juice” – a wine byproduct). I had every intention of doing that as we started…
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isles of lavender
happy august! one of the best months, at least for those of us on a teacher’s school year. we saw in july at the karlovy vary film festival and saw it out sitting around a camp fire deep in the woods of western san juan island, washington. this year, we’re spending our august in washington state and a bit of michigan near the end there. it has been such a nice and comfortable transition from prague to vancouver to here on fidalgo island (and many areas around the puget sound) for the next few weeks. a bit of a far cry from my study holiday last august (3+ weeks studying…
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herbalist in training
i don’t know what it is about herbalism that initially appealed to me. maybe it was the resourcefulness, learning about the plants already growing around you, what medicinal properties they have, how plants can help heal your body. maybe it’s that i didn’t have a garden and the idea of wildcrafting and foraging seemed really accessible (also, free!!!). i think a combination of all these things, but when a friend referred me to some local herbalism workshops, i got really into them. so much so that i decided to enroll in my first herbalism course, which i took online from the herbal academy over the past year and have just recently…
