Ecofabulous living ideas!

ECO CHIC: GREEN INTERIOR DESIGN + HEALTHY LIVING

SARAH BARNARD, INTERIOR DESIGNER AND LEED AP MUSES ABOUT SUSTAINABLE BUILDING, GREEN INTERIOR DESIGN, ECO-FRIENDLY DECORATING, HISTORIC PRESERVATION, HEALTHY LIVING, TRAVEL AND PETS.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 24, 2012

KITCHEN CURES: Tried & Tested Home Remedies

Interiors by: Sarah Barnard 

Text used with permission from: 

LEMONS AND LAVENDER: The Eco Guide to Better Homekeeping by Billee Sharp.

Many remedies can be made from what you have in the kitchen, from spices as well as plants. Here are a few simple tried and tested recipes:

Nutmeg

Grated nutmeg soothes diarrhea and upset tummies. Use a nutmeg grater tograte a small amount (about 1/8 teaspoon) into warmed milk (cow, soy, rice,or in oat milk).

Cayenne

Use this pepper as a remedy for colds, coughs, sore throats, heartburn,hemorrhoids, and varicose veins, or as a digestive stimulant and to improve circulation. Make an infusion by adding 1/2 teaspoon cayenne powder to 1 cup boiled water. Add 2 cups of hot water to make a more pleasant and palatable infusion. Add lemon and honey to taste.

Cabbage

This commonplace vegetable is a fantastic antibacterial and anti-inflammatory. Cabbage can be used for stomach ulcers, arthritis, and swollen joints, or as a liver tonic. To create a cabbage tonic, dilute 1 part cabbage juice with 2 parts water. For swollen joints and arthritic pain, lightly crush a few green outer cabbage leaves with a rolling pin, and then lay over afflicted area with the inner side of the leaf on your skin, securing with a bandage. Some prefer to boil the leaves, let them cool, and then apply. Going to bed with a cabbage bandage on is also good, giving the leaf time to work its magic.

Black and Green Teas

Use black tea for an upset tummy and diarrhea. Green tea strengthens theimmune system, and you can reuse tea bags to stanch cuts or calm insectbites.

White Tea

White tea, green tea, and black tea are all made from the leaves of Camelliasinensis. White tea is made from the youngest leaves of the plant; it is a sweet brew and has less caffeine than green or black tea. It is also rich in antioxidants and is recommended for reducing "bad" cholesterol and improving artery health. White tea is a little costly but a good choice for health and flavor.

Lemon

Use this citrus for colds and infections. Add the fresh-squeezed juice to hot
water, with honey to taste. For a fast sore-throat curative, use unsweetened
lemon juice with warm water as an antiseptic gargle.

Turmeric

This spice is a natural antiseptic and antibacterial. Turmeric is also a liverdetox and curative for acne and common colds. Make a turmeric tea by adding a teaspoon of the powder to 4 cups of boiling water. Simmer over low heat until it dissolves, adding milk and honey to taste.


Kombucha Tea

Some people love the taste of kombucha tea; others don't relish it at all. It hasbeen credited with miraculous properties and is a probiotic, making it verycurative for digestive issues. Kombucha also comes recommended for acne,constipation, arthritis, depression, and fatigue, and is hailed as a protectionagainst cancer. I regard it as a tasty tonic, and my family drinks it daily. Mysons were the first to taste kombucha, and they loved the fizziness and flavor. This healthful drink is easy to make so long as you have a "ferment" (some people call it a "mushroom" because of the way it looks). To procure your ferment, try to find somebody who brews kombucha already. They should have plenty of ferments to share, as every batch of tea grows an extra ferment on top of the original.

a large wide-necked glass jar, cloth or paper towel to cover jar, rubber bandto secure cover

7 tea bags, black or green (preferably organic)

1 cup sugar

2 quarts water

kombucha ferment

Boil the water and add it to the tea bags in the jar. Let it steep for 20 minutes.Remove the tea bags and add the sugar, stirring to dissolve. When the tea has cooled, add the kombucha ferment with some of the liquor that it came in, roughly 10 percent of the total tea in your jar. Cover the jar with the cloth or paper towel, and secure with the rubber band. The lid will serve to keep dust and flies out while allowing the tea to breathe. Let the jar sit in one place (moving can disturb the fermentation process), out of the direct sunlight, and at room temperature. The fermentation process will take seven to 12 days, depending on the room temperature. Your batch of kombucha will ferment more quickly if the room is warm. You have to check to see when it is ready, and you'll be able to tell by the taste. When fermented, the tea can be decanted into glass bottles with screw lids and kept in the fridge. Remember to keep a little of the kombucha tea to add with your ferment for your next batch.

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Billee Sharp was a contemporary art curator and gallerist in London, working with the YBA group of artists before moving to San Francisco in 1993, where she started a family and record label with her husband Jonah Sharp, a pioneering electronic musician, founded a green cleaning business and curated many multimedia cultural events.

SARAH BARNARD is a member of the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID), is certified by the National Kitchen and Bath Association (NKBA), and is recognized by the International Institute for Bau-Biologie & Ecology as a Building Biology Practitioner (BBP) and by the United States Green Building Council as a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Accredited Professional (LEED AP). She serves on the Santa Monica Conservancy’s board of directors and specializes in green interior design and historic preservation.

Sarah is intrigued by clients who have unusual requests and lives for a challenge. She hasn’t met one yet that she didn’t like. Sarah loves designing for anyone with pets! She adores people who are avid collectors of anything they love. Sarah is often retained by clients who have never worked with an interior designer because they thought designers weren’t for them (until now). She is known for delivering, on time, all the time. Sarah is incredibly down to earth and people love her for her frankness. Sarah and her staff will do just about anything for a client, build a custom sunroom for the kitties, organize and alphabetize boxes in the garage, take the kids out shopping for their own bathroom tiles…

Sarah Barnard Design undertakes residential interior design projects, commercial spaces and even single rooms. She can help you with space planning, color counseling, kitchen and bath remodeling, historic preservation, and all aspects of green design and healthy living: organic, non-toxic, sustainable and fair trade materials, energy and resource conservation, air and water purification, natural furnishings and fabrics and much more!

Excerpt of the Day: "Lemons and Lavender" by Billee Sharp

Looking to save money and remain eco-friendly?  Meet Billee Sharp and her fabulous book Lemons and Lavender!  Packed with tips, recipes, and advice, this handy how-to will help you save the planet and your pocketbook.

Interested?  Here’s a peek of what’s inside:

Most of us are searching for the good life. What constitutes a “good life” is obviously subjective, but our quest to find happiness directs each of our lives in unexpected ways. When I think of personal happiness, security and fulfillment immediately come to mind. We all want the means to realize our hearts’ desires, but it is perhaps these desires that need to be reexamined. As a society, we’ve recently learned the hard way that we often want more than we can afford: our overextended credit system and failed subprime mortgage market have led our economy to a near collapse.

Twenty-first-century life affords us a unique perspective on the world we live in. We are hyperconnected to the rest of the globe, and we are all too aware of the ecological and economic crises that beset contemporary life. We can see that our daily actions have very real repercussions, and what we do as individuals shapes our world both literally and figuratively. We now have an opportunity to take our vision for humanity more seriously.

Slowly, we are acknowledging that the earth does not have the capacity to meet our unrepressed appetites, and that to end the destruction of our environment and the suffering of millions, we have to want less individually. 

Our emotional well-being is connected to how much money we have; while it is wretched and distracting not to have enough money to pay the bills, there are also pressures and worries that come with having plenty.

As Duane Elgin notes in his book Promise Ahead,

For many, the American Dream has become the soul’s nightmare.

Often, the price of affluence is inner alienation and emptiness. Not

surprisingly, polls show that a growing number of Americans are

seeking lives of greater simplicity as a way to rediscover the life of

the soul.

How do we adapt our life expectations accordingly? For me, the desirability of a $7,000 designer handbag evaporates when compared to the number of people that sum could feed. The carbon offsetting system—where individuals calculate their carbon expenditure and try to lower their carbon footprint—is an initiative that shows how seriously we take our situation.  Likewise, the growing support for fair-traded goods in commercial markets is evidence that mainstream society is beginning to show more compassion for the people who make and grow our food.

Quite literally, how we see the world has changed. In 1966, with the question “Why haven’t we seen a photograph of the whole earth yet?” Stewart Brand initiated a public campaign for NASA to release the satellite image of our planet from outer space. His argument was that the image would be a powerful symbol for humanity, and he was right. Our visualization of the world was changed with our access to this image, and this parallels the dramatic reconfigurations that have transformed Western society. We now have legislation that prohibits discrimination based on color, gender, and religion. Popular opinion and our evolving global consciousness give us hope that humankind can peacefully coexist with one another and with the earth.