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I think for most of us, the holidays can be a big, stressful trap. It doesn’t matter who you are, the holidays have history, hopefully good, sometimes less so. Last year I felt pressure to make grand memories when all I wanted to do was mope and that left me feeling stressed and a little put out, even though it was all of my own making. This year I have consciously chosen to do less for Thanksgiving, and am trying to feel my way towards what works for the rest of this holiday season. And while my mom isn’t far from my thoughts this holiday season, I am trying to make space to feel sad as well as space to take pleasure in what this year has to offer.

I’m sure most of us are aware of the Dirty Dozen, the most pesticide-laden and fruits and vegetables as well as the Clean Fifteen, the fruits and vegetables you could get away with buying conventional. Did you know there is a list of food additives that is best to avoid also? The Environmental Working Group (EWG) now has a Dirty Dozen Guide to Food Additives that can clog up what we are eating.

My mom was really interested in propolis the last few years of her life. So much so that she created her own Propolis Tincture as well as putting it in our Gum Protector for years. My parents kept bee hives for years  and my dad still does, for the benefits of the honey, bee pollen, and garden pollination. Propolis is a sticky substance that bees collect from the resin of trees while they are foraging for food. They use it to repair and disinfect their hive, to build panels, as an embalming tool for intruders it cannot remove from their hive, and as a microbiocidal agent. In short, it helps keep the hive healthy.

We’ve been having discussions about our line of pet products recently and that got me to thinking about how my mom developed her herbal treatments for our pets. We always had a menagerie around, anywhere from your basic cat and/or dog, to rabbits, birds of all sizes, rats, a guinea pig or two, snakes, frogs, and fish. I think this was my mom’s way of giving us the farm experience she had as a child.

I had another post intended for today, but last night as I was staying up late to watch the Giants clinch the World Series, I ran across a post by one of my favorite food bloggers, Clotilde of Chocolate and Zucchini. Her recipes are wonderful, but what makes this one particularly special to me is how similar her soup philosophy was to my mom’s.

Today, I am including an excerpt from mom’s booklet, A Pocket Full of Posies on some of the many health benefits of saffron. Saffron is expensive, especially when purchased at the grocery store. My mom always bought it by the ounce and it always came in those really cool little tins. If you and a few friends want to go in on one, that would be a much more cost effective way to put saffron into regular rotation in your cooking. I didn’t realize it until I was older, but she would throw it into everything: soups, stews, rice dishes (obviously), even with roasted vegetables and desserts.

Have you ever wondered how we make our tinctures? The process is fairly basic and adheres to Traditional Chinese Medical practices regarding cooking a Chinese herbal formula.

I’ve decided to revive our In the News posts, because there have been a few interesting articles catch my attention in the past few weeks.

The following post is an excerpt from A Pocket Full of Posies, a collection of my mom’s writing and I thought it was particularly relevant these days, considering how much we see in the news about the changing beliefs and the results of scientific studies on how fats and oils affect our bodies.

Many of us, who are conscientious regarding how we treat ourselves and our family, think less about how we are treating our treasured family pets. We think nothing of steroids for a skin condition, low quality food, anti-depressants or sedatives for behavioral problems. Animals are affected by the stresses in our lives just as much as us, and they do not have the ability to speak for themselves or tell us what in their lives is or is not working for them.