Kitchen Herbalism

Remedies from the Spice Cabinet and Kitchen Herb Garden

Earlier this week, I told you that I’m going to be sharing excerpts from Herbal Academy Courses, and I asked you which courses you most wanted to see.

The most popular choice was the Introductory Herbal Course, which honestly, is a great place to start. It’s a comprehensive course that covers everything you need to know to get started with herbs and herbal preparations.

What I love about this course is that it’s written in a beginner friendly, easy to read and understand format. While it’s easy to read and accessible to just about everyone, it’s also in depth and comprehensive.

The course includes a comprehensive Materia Medica with details on more than 80 herbal monographs, focusing on easy to find and beginner friendly herbs. It also teaches you how to turn those herbs into all the common herbal preparations, including teas, tinctures, salves, poultices and more.

If you download and print the course as a hardy copy, it’s more than 800 pages long…and that doesn’t include the video lessons!

If you want more details about what exactly is covered, you can find the full table of contents for the course here.

I poured through all the lessons, and tried to pick a few excerpts that give you a good idea of what you can expect from the lessons. With a course this comprehensive, it’s hard to choose just one thing, so I pulled out three sections to share.

Since I wanted the everyone to have a chance to benefit, even those without an existing herbal apothecary on their shelves at home, I chose a section on Medicinal Kitchen Herbs. This walks you through the medicinal uses of common things like sage, thyme and black pepper.

Thyme happens to be one of my favorite herbs, and I use it regularly for sinus congestion and as a herbal cough syrup. It is, in fact, the very first herb I learned to use back when I was a pre-teen and pouring over herbalism books. While I could read all day long about Yarrow and Elecampane, my 12 year old suburban self had no idea where to find them…but I could easily pull a bottle of thyme off the spice cabinet to treat my cold (or make my first Thyme Tincture).

Thyme Tincture

Since so many of you are gardeners, be it on an apartment patio or on a larger scale, I also pulled out their section on Easy to Grow Medicinal Herbs.

It’ll be seed starting time soon, so it’s a good time to plan your herb garden. Many of these are common kitchen herbs that you can also use to season your meals, but some are stricty medicinal and incredibly useful for treating common health issues.

Lastly, I pulled out their section on Herbs for Headaches, since that’s such a common issue that everyone can relate too. They cover a number of common, everyday issues and how to treat them herbally, so you can put your herbal education to use right away.

Many of these herbs, including Crampbark Tincture, are ones that I use personally on a regular basis.

Crampbark Tincture

I hope you enjoy these excerpts from the Herbal Academy’s Introductory Herbal Course.

Next up, I’m going to share excerpts from Making Herbal Preparations 101, as that was the next most popular choice, followed by The Foraging Course…and after that we’ll see how the voting stands.

If you’d still like to vote for your favorites and choose the next course sneak peaks, you can do so here.

Let me know what you think of the course excerpts…and, what are your favorite spice cabinet medicinal herbs? Leave me a note in the comments.

(Comments only, please. Emails tend to get lost in my inbox, and as much as I’d love to get back to each and every one, my screen time is very limited…and things fall through the cracks, and emails get buried in my inbox. If you comment here, they’re all in one place, and it’s much easier to get back to every single one.)

Until Next Time,

Ashley at Practical Self Reliance