so, last week, i trued anise seed.  Pimpinella anisum. i tried and i tried and i tried.  literally.  i burned two batches of the seeds as i attempted to simmer them in a pot on the stove.  theere they were all black and toasty, with not a drop of water left in the saucepan.  luckily, somehow the pot came clean with some scrubbing or i would have been buying a new one for Rainbow.  so, then i just infused the seeds.  i put the seeds in a mason jar and poured boiling water over them and left them for about 30 minutes or more.  turned out the water i used was brown, i couldn’t see as i filled the teapot up, but when i got a glass of water and washed my hands…there it was, brown water.  so, i dumped that tea too.  who knows what was making the water brown that day.  i gave up for the day…no anise tea.

forward to thursday, the following day…and i did the anise seed infusion method again.  and it worked.  clean water, no burnt seeds.  the tea was very pleasant.  sweet and light.  nothing too intense to write about…i mean, not that everything has to be about intensity, but i guess somewhere inside i hope for something really good to write about after i drink the tea every week.  this was not the case with anise, but isn’t that something special too?  just sweet.  pleasant.  light.  and medicinally speaking anise is a digestive remedy.  it is aromatic and good for bloating and gas.

and now this week….artichoke.  Cynara scolymus.  another herb used for the digestive tract, in a way.  but through the liver…which can consequently affect the digestion.  the leaves are used medicinally, as opposed to the immature flower of the globe artichoke, which we are all familiar with as an edible vegetable.  Artichoke is hepatoprotective (protective of the liver), a choleretic and cholegogue (gets the liver to produce bile and gets it flowing)…all of these relate to its very, very bitter taste.   which i can attest to.  i made an infusion of about 2 Tablespoons of the dried herb with 16 oz. of boiling water.  i let it sit for about 20 minutes, strained and drank.  it was really bitter, which i do not mind at all.  but it also had this slight gaggy quality.  i drank it down though, and felt a gurgle in my tummy shortly thereafter.  probably due to the bile flow, which stimulates the rest of the G.I. tract to get going.  and that leads me to remember that it can be an appetite stimulant.

Artichoke leaf also is known for its hypolipidaemic activity.   in other words, it can inhibit cholesterol biosynthesis.  there have been studies and clinical trials done to support this finding.  a great starting place for source of these articles is www.pubmed.com which is the National Library for Medicine website for scholarly articles and reviews.

that’s all for this week.  and last week too!

see you next time.

xoxomelissa