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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.

This Saturday, October 4, 2014 come help celebrate 40 years of nurse-midwifery in Santa Cruz. Local members of the California Nurse-Midwives Association are organizing a fundraiser and silent auction at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center with live music by local band SambaDa.

We have posted a version of this information before, but with autumn here and the exceptionally nasty enterovirus 68 making the news, it is well worth repeating our cold and flu guidelines.

The reishi mushroom is an herbal adaptogen, meaning it demonstrates a non-specific effect on the body’s ability to resist environmental stressors. Adaptogens are a group of natural medicines that help our bodies adapt to a wide variety of stressors including environmental, chemical, physical, or emotional. Too much long term stress on the body can wreak havoc on our health and immune system and may lead to a variety of illnesses or health conditions including a weakened immune system, which opens the possibility for a whole wealth of health issues, cardiovascular disease, and fatigue and stamina problems.

As I’m sure most everyone is aware, we are coming up on the anniversary of my mom, Martha Benedict’s death. This past year has certainly not been an easy one for our family: we lost two matriarchal figures just over a week apart and this year has been a journey for each of us to find our new normal. Out of death comes new life and this has proven true for us, as each one of us has embarked on new endeavors. The happiness that we have tastes bittersweet knowing that while my mom was instrumental in creating this change, we can only share it with her from within our hearts.