ROSEMARY IN MY HAIR AND MY COOKIES
Updated: Jan 24, 2022
But no hair in my cookies!
I made a rosemary hair rinse and rosemary cookies. The cookies were gluten free with a hazelnut flour. They used 1/2 cup of coconut oil and I think they may be really, extra good if I swap that out for butter next time.
Hair rinse report below; but meanwhile I've been meaning to use this space to
record some of my herbal notes.
I started using the Herbal Materia Medica sheets from Kami McBride (photo below). I love to pull out all my herb books and consolidate the information when I'm working with an herb and these sheets are a great vehicle for that. I have many notebooks full of notes and recipes and this has been a great organizer. I don't like to google the herb, but just refer to my trusty books to keep the quantity of information reasonable and not get distracted. I try to make my herbal medicine making as much of a computer-free practice as possible to get the most out of time spent with the plants and to be able to most whole-ly drop into my senses and intuition as I work. Writing in notebooks and keeping paper notes is the way to go for me (with some of it making its way here!)
Rosemary Notes
A few of my notes on Rosemary here: (I'm not a clinical herbalist or medical practitioner of any kind, so, you know, do your own research). This is a plant that I dearly love, particularly the smell. It grows so well here in Sacramento and I've used it in ritual as sticks to burn in a fire, in savory foods, desserts, and now this hair rinse. I've used rosemary medicinally in Organic Olivia's recipe for Immunitea. This tea includes common kitchen herbs for upper respiratory health including rosemary, onion, orange peel, ginger and it's lovely! Rosemary's medicinal action for improving concentration and memory and relieve headaches, being a digestive aid, treating inflammation and being used as an anti-bacterial and pain relieving wound wash make it appealing to use more! With warming and stimulating energetics, it seems a good option for these colder, winter mornings.
Put a pin in it: I'm looking forward to learning more of the mythology around rosemary and sharing that.
Hair Rinse
The hair rinse was about two cups of water boiled. About 5 sprigs of rosemary dropped into the just boiled water and -importantly- covered. I let it steep for maybe an hour while I did kiddo bedtime. This morning I mixed about 1 1/2 cups of the hair rinse (basically strong rosemary tea) with about a 1/2 cup of ACV. After using a brush to exfoliate my scalp I massaged the rinse into my hair and left it on for about five minutes.
Great for a morning shower, rosemary is a bit of an uplifting stimulant and I had plenty of good energy after that shower to wrangle kiddo while getting my prenatal yoga "work out" in and then make a big ol' breakfast! So my hair turned out lovely. This might have been the best result out of the White Oak Bark, or the Marshmallow and Rose I've tried so far. The curls really popped!
I had a busy day wrangling kiddo solo while Kevin worked so while I tried to snap of selfie of my great hair day, it was very windy and very sunny making it both impossible to see the screen of the phone and keep my hair from flying about!
Here's the best I could do:
