Simple Winter Practices: Making Steams & Teas
Here on the Cape this time of year, sunlight is scarce, and we still have a few months ahead of damp chilly weather before the warmth returns and signs of spring start to pop. With cold temps, less sunlight, drying indoor heat and loads of pathogens circulating, it feels more important than ever to pay close attention to our body's needs and keep a pulse on our immunity. My body says: slow down, keep skin supple, drink nourishing teas all day, dress in wool layers, eat warming cooked foods, and steam! What is your body asking of you during this winter season?
For many folks, winter is a time of hibernation and reflection, but also a season marked by frequent congestion, stagnation, and illness. If you are struggling with a physical/mental health issue or compromised immune system, feeling run down or over-taxed, or simply wanting to bring more botanicals into your life to support of your overall immunity and vitality, consider incorporating more herbal teas and steams into your practice. By enhancing your hydration and oxygenation with particular herbs, you’re delivering potent nutritive medicine directly into your body, helping to ward off pathogens and aiding the body’s natural detoxification processes. And since every plant or shroom offers its own unique chemistry, tastes, energies and therapeutic qualities, you can become more deeply acquainted with the herbs you feel drawn to through the practice of tea-drinking and steaming. In my home, with the constant flurry of community activities and exposure to schools and pathogens, these practices have become a vital part of my daily domestic flow.
1. HEALING STEAMS
There are two types of herbal steams you can regularly use in your home. The first is a daily practice and involves keeping a large pot of steaming water with chosen botanicals on the stove to help keep the air in the home moist and clean. A humidifier works too. The second method is a practice you can use during times of illness and/or sinus congestion. Of course, you can incorporate the second method into your daily or weekly life if you have the time and interest!
First Method: Creating Steam in Your Home
If you use a woodstove to heat your home, you know how quickly the air becomes dry. You also know how simple it is to keep a large uncovered pot of steaming water on top of the woodstove, given someone is home to tend to it (water steams quickly and needs to be added to often...nothing worse than a burning pot). Doesn't it sound nice for your steam to also be antimicrobial and aromatic? Simply add a few tablespoons of fresh or dried herbs of your choosing, or a few drops of essential oils to the pot of water. If you don't have a woodstove, heat a pot of water using your electric or gas stove for short periods of time throughout the day, or play around with putting herbs and essential oils in a humidifier.
Herbs to choose from (to name only a few): mint, lemon balm, anise hyssop, oregano, eucalyptus, rosemary, thyme, sage
Essential oils (to name a few): oregano, lavender, thyme, rosemary, birch, pine, wintergreen, lemon, eucalyptus, tea tree, peppermint, laurel leaf, frankincense, juniper, douglas fir
Thyme, anise hyssop, sage, lemon balm, mint, rosemary, oregano, marjoram, and savory (the list goes on..) can all grow easily in your home garden. These herbs are rich in volatile oils, smell phenomenal, and possess significant antiseptic, antiviral, antibacterial, anti-parasitic, and antifungal properties. When the herbs are heated in water, volatile oils are released into the steam.
Today in our home, we have freshly-harvested pine needles and resiny branches, sweet fern and some wintergreen leaves gently simmering and filling the room with an uplifting & refreshing antimicrobial steam. Other days I use juniper branches, needles and berries to simmer and steam, just picked from trees in our neighborhood, or dried eucalyptus brought home from Jamaica. Sometimes I throw in rinds of oranges and lemons with a bit of clove and star anise. Get creative...use the greens and branches from evergreens growing right outside your house...the peels of fresh fruit...or spices laying around in your cabinet.
Second Method: Clear Congestion and Deliver Antimicrobial & Antiviral Medicine into Your Membranes & Lungs!
During times of illness and/or sinus congestion, an herbal steam can be extraordinarily helpful and healing.
You only need a few items to prepare for a simple herbal steam:
3 tablespoons or 2 small handfuls of herbs (any combo of pine needles, juniper branches/berries, mint, lemon balm, oregano, thyme, sage, rosemary, eucalyptus)
At least two quarts of water in a pot
2-3 drops of essential oils (choose from list above) Note: essential oils are extremely potent and powerful (also not necessary to use during steam). Be sure to close your eyes while steaming to avoid burning.
Large, clean towel
Tissues or snot cloth (use for clearing nose of phlegm during & after steam); neti pot with fine sea salt (if you'd like; very effective immediately following steam)
Instructions:
Add your choice of herbs to the boiling water. Turn off the stove and cover the pot for 5 or so minutes.
Place the hot pot on a safe surface (on an appropriate pad or trivet) at the right height for you to sit or stand above the pot (table, bathroom counter, etc).
Remove pot cover, place your head over pot, and put large towel over your head. Be sure to tuck in the towel around you so steam does not escape.
Move your face as close as possible to steam, without burning your face. Close your eyes and breathe in the steam through your mouth and nose.
Allow your pores to open and sweat. If mucus begins to drain, try to clear it out/blow nose while still under towel, without letting too much steam escape.
Stay for as long as you feel comfortable. Five minutes of steaming is sufficient.
Repeat steam 3 or more times daily if possible.
Optional: since your pores are open, take the opportunity to do a face mask using clay or raw honey! It is also a perfect time to clean your sinuses using a neti pot.
Feel the difference?!
2. CONSTANT TEAS BREWIN'
There are several ways to create herbal teas; you can make decoctions, hot infusions, cold infusions, sun teas or moon teas. Here we'll focus on decoctions and infusions.
Decoctions are simmered teas, ideal for drawing out the medicinal properties of roots, dried berries, barks and seeds. Compared to herbal infusions, they are much stronger in flavor and more concentrated. Less tenacious parts of the plants, such as leaves, stems, and blossoms can simply be infused in hot or cold water to extract their medicine. Longer steeping times tend to draw out more minerals, vitamins, enzymes and aromatic oils, creating nutritive, mineral-rich tea. Play around with herbs and flavors--there are loads of combinations of herbs you can choose from.
Cold infusions are ideal for making tea with mucilaginous plants, such a marshmallow root and slippery elm, as well as herbs with delicate essential oils, like rose petals and peppermint. Since there is no boiling involved in this preparation, be aware that bacteria growth can happen more quickly than with hot infusions. To avoid this, clean all your tools thoroughly and drink within 24 hours (or refrigerate your infusion if you're not going to drink it right away).
Today's Decoction. This morning, I put a few slices of wildcrafted reishi in a pot of filtered water with some local turkey tails, a few small chunks of foraged chaga, and a bit of dried ginger. After an hour or so of steady simmering, I added roasted dandelion root, chicory root and a little cinnamon bark. I let the tea simmer for another 20 or so minutes before straining. Sipping this with organic oat milk and Vermont maple syrup makes me very happy, nourished and warm.
Side Note. Reishi, found in nearly every corner of the world, is ripe and ready on the Outer Cape throughout the summer and fall months. We always forage reishi when the undersides are pure white, tops are colorful with a bright sheen (sometimes resembling shellac), and there is evidence of brown powder, showing that spores have been released. Immediately following a harvest, while fresh and moist, we cut the shroom into thin slices, dry the slices in a dehydrator on a low temperature of 110-115 or so degrees, and store in sealed glass jars in a cool, dark place. We thoughtfully forage for chaga up north in Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire during January and February, and pound the great fungus into small pieces, making it ideal for drying, storing and selling. Want to learn more about the medicinal qualities of reishi, chaga, dandelion, chicory, ginger? Take some time reading my Plant Profiles. Interested in purchasing our wildcrafted chaga or reishi? Check out the Apothecary Shop.
Back to More Tea-Making. Other days I make a root base with ashwagandha, eleuthero, marshmallow, and astragalus and later add cinnamon, cardamom, black pepper, clove, turmeric and anise. There are so many ways to make adrenal-supporting, immune-balancing, liver-protective, warming and enlivening CHAI! Countless benefits for your digestive, circulatory, cardiovascular, lymphatic, respiratory, endocrine, and cognitive health. Read last winter's blog post to gather fun recipes and learn more about making warming chais.
Some days I decoct hawthorn berries, shatavari and ginger...or elderberry, rose hips, and fennel. What are some of your fav herb combos?
Today's Infusion. At this very moment, sitting on my counter, is a half-gallon ball jar filled with hot water and a blend of dried leaves and blossoms. WaLa, an infusion! To make this, I put a few handfuls of Wild Blossoms' Mineral-Rich Tea (a delicious mix of nettles, lemon balm, milky oat tops, oat straw, alfalfa, dandelion leaf, peppermint) in the big jar, along with a few dried calendula blossoms, filled the jar with hot (just boiled) water, and let it all infuse for 15-20 minutes before I started straining & sipping. You could also make this tea in a mug with 1-2 tablespoons of the dried mix, or a quart ball jar with 4 or so tablespoons of dried herbs. I enjoy strong tea, so I'll let the flowers and leaves sit in the hot water for a few hours, pouring off cups as I need. Generally-speaking, this blend is all about nourishing our nervous systems and feeding our gut microbes with vital easily-assimilable nutrients, aiding in elimination, and providing supportive medicine to our liver and digestive organs, kidneys, skin and bladder. You can learn more about each plant in this blend in Plant Profiles.
Overnight Infusions: a Superb Method To make an overnight infusion, consider using nettle leaf, oatstraw, milky oat tops, lemon balm, linden leaf & flower, hawthorn leaf & flower, cleavers or chickweed. Marshmallow root makes a superb overnight infusion (remember: cold water actually pulls more healing mucilage from the plant). Using hot water is appropriate for the other plants listed above.
Simple Steps for Making an Overnight Infusion:
Warm a quart-sized glass jar by rinsing it with warm water.
Heat up one quart of water in a tea kettle or pot.
Scoop 1 oz. of dried herb mix into a quart-sized glass jar. Feel welcome to estimate or simply eye-ball amount.
Pour hot water into the warm jar over the herbs.
Allow the infusion to steep 4 - 10 hours.
In the morning, strain your nourishing herbal infusion
Enjoy each sip! Drink within 12-24 hours for the freshest experience.
Don't know where to source herbs? Check out...
https://www.zackwoodsherbs.com/
https://www.sawmillherbfarm.com/
https://fosterfarmbotanicals.com/
https://www.freeversefarm.com/
https://www.pacificbotanicals.com/
https://mountainroseherbs.com/
The ideas and possibilities for tea-making and steam-making with herbs are endless. What do you have in your freezer and pantry? What's alive outside in abundance in your wild neck of the woods during this season? Are there any plants or blossoms still hanging on in your garden? Do you have an apothecary in your hometown? Get creative and make teas and steams! Botanical medicine is loaded with potent nutrients. Tend your body well and you'll be amazed how harmoniously it functions!
Feeling overwhelmed by all the possibilities? Simple is often best. Get to know one herb at a time, or stick to making teas and steam with three herbs. Play around with blending, or leave it to your community herbalist and purchase blends!
Enjoy,
Sarah