PHARMACY FRIDAY - Honeysuckle to Reduce Overheating

   Although it is officially still Spring here where we live, for many of us, that time of year that often renders the day unbearably hot is already here. With all that heat, and with us trying to live more naturally and reduce the amount of electricity we use (meaning no air conditioning) we begin looking for ways to beat the heat, keep cool, and, when that doesn't work, we look for ways to remedy heat exhaustion and heat stroke (both of which are very dangerous).

As some of you may know, I have a small shop at our local flea market. It is a cross between indoors and out. The inside is inside of a windowless metal building with no electricity, and the outside area is solid gray gravel. It gets VERY hot when the weather is hot! We have a few canopies up that we often sit under, but even with that, when the sun hits a certain angle, it simple heats up the gravel under the canopy, the canopy holds in the heat, thus creating a miserable summertime heater.

I have overheated quite a few times as I work throughout the late spring and summer, getting heat exhaustion nearly to the point of heat stroke a few times.. With several health issues, including heart problems, a few times got downright scary! So with my first (and extra early) round of heat exhaustion this year, I began to urgently search for natural remedies and aides to help me endure the upcoming summer's heat and still be able to work.

To my excited astonishment, I learned that the flowers on the honeysuckle growing in the corner of my yard was my answer! The Japanese Honeysuckle (which is what both Dave and I have) seems to be the one that is said to work the best. You simply drink brewed tea made from the Honeysuckle Flowers and drink to reduce the heat in your body!  HERE is some more great, detailed information about using Honeysuckle Tea to reduce/eliminate excess heat from your body when you are hit with heat exhaustion or heat stroke.

A couple of weekends ago, while working at my setup at the Flea Market, it got much hotter than we had expected and I badly overheated. I came home feeling really lousy and, as I pulled in my driveway, I was greeted with a burst of Honeysuckle blooms. I remembered what I had read, got out and picked a handful, then brewed me a big cup as soon as I got inside. I sweetened it with honey and sat down to taste my first ever cup. First, I was surprised at how wonderful it tasted!! Remember when you were a kid and you pulled those little flowers stamens out the end of that honeysuckle flower, anxiously awaiting that little 'drop' of sweet nectar to pop out so you could quickly catch it on your tongue, then wished like everything you could have a whole cup of it because that wonderfully sweet and tasty drop just wasn't enough? Well, that is what that tea tasted like... that whole cup I dreamed of having when I was a kid!!! It was pure Heaven!

And even better...... within an hour I began to feel much better! (oh, yes, I had also badly sunburned on one side, to the point of blisters). No doubt I was experiencing heat exhaustion when I came home, and it is the kind of heat that seems to take forever to leave your  body, but I was absolutely AMAZED at how fast I began to cool off and feel better just a little while after that cup of tea!

Now when I head out for the flea market to work I take with me a BIG mug of icey cold Honeysuckle Tea. I simply toss a handful of Honeysuckle flowers into about 2 cups of hot water and let steep for awhile. I pour that into my big mug with sweetener, ice, finish filling with water and stir. Because I have also been craving limeades, I also squeeze a couple of limes into my mug with the Honeysuckle Tea Yes, I toss them limes in, too, after I have squeezed the juice into my mug). It is wonderfully delicious! [Recently I have been craving citrus fruits HARD, and when I caved into my cravings, the heart palpitations that I had started to have completely disappeared, but that is a subject for another post at another time.]  Sometimes I sweeten this heat relieving iced tea with honey, and sometimes with granulated evaporated cane juice (I use Zulka). Both are excellent.  And I can first handedly say that sipping on my large mug of this wonderfully tasting and refreshing tea throughout the day (okay, sometimes I guzzle), most definitely keeps me cooler and greatly helps me get through a day of working outdoors in our sticky, icky humid heat. I hope this will help you, too.

Now, to figure out how to get my honeysuckle vines that appear to be slowing down its blooming cycle to pick its blooming back up. Oh, yes, when it is in heavy bloom, you can dry it and store it away for later use. Just make sure you hide it from your cats, as they seem to love it as much as they do catnip!

(AF) Flea Market Finds

We've rolled around to the start of yet another flea market weekend and I haven't shown you the wonderful 'finds' we got last weekend. Last Friday was too cold, windy and with a threat of rain, so no one opened that day. As far as my sales went the rest of the weekend... Saturday's sales were so-so, and Sunday's were almost non-existent. But I DID get some really good deals! So I keep telling myself that the savings was worth going for.

I was sooo excited to find that 3-tier China serving plate! I have been, piece-by-piece, building that set as I find pieces at flea markets. I love roses and am setting that set aside for "girl time" occasions. It may be hard to see, but the dessert plates are the Golden Rhapsody (lily of the valley) Japan Porcelain. I have barely gotten started, but am trying to put together a set of them for mine and Dave's "Sunday Best & Special occasion" type meals. The brown 'pan' is clay and says something about Germany on the bottom. I have never seen one like it before but, I think it will be great to bake a round type of bread that I make in it. It has a tiny chip in the end of the handle, but not a problem for using. It is so unique and I fell in love with it. I do wish it could talk and tell me about its life! The tiny little bowl is thick, sturdy, and I could think of lots of uses for it. Then on the left, those 3 pieces are all part of a tea cup... one to use for brewing loose teas, which I really needed. I have 2 big bags of loose tea and it is such a hassle to try and get it all crammed into one of those mesh tea spoons. All of that together came to less than $5.

When Dave can't be there with me, I look around and tell him over the phone what new stuff is there. This time, when I told him about the manual meat slicer, he had to have it! He had been wanting one, it is really nice, and it was super cheap!

I spent a dollar on the items in the pic below. The bowl was half price. It is white glass, not sure if it is milk glass, but it is a great, small mixing bowl... good and solid. The coffee cups will be great for large hot chocolates. I am kind of nutty about coffee cups and have a never ending collection of them, seems I just keep adding to it, too. These were a quarter each. And I forgot to add in the nice China one that says "Sanka" across it that I got for a dime.

Here are two more pictures of the tea cup set so that you can see them better:

Now, I can't wait to bake Dave some bread in that wonderful clay pan and eat it together on our new little Vintage plates!

(AF) Mind Boggling COOL!!!!

Over the years, junk no-longer-needed things really starts to accumulate. As our needs change, and kids grow up and move out, there becomes many, many things that we no longer need. Recently I decided it was time to do some drastic culling. I have barely begun, but already it is proving to be a far bigger undertaking than I imagined.

And it is extremely emotionally difficult. There is such a multitude of things I must get rid of, but the memories attached to much of it REALLY makes it difficult to part with things. Now, I do have my 'keepsakes that I would never let go of.  But then there are the things that there just isn't any logical reason to keep, not even as a keepsake. Yet they are still difficult to let go of because just looking at them brings back fond memories that makes you smile. One thing I have been doing, though, is taking pictures of these types of items before I let go of them. It really helps.

Today was Flea Market day and I had gathered a box of more junk nice stuff to take with me today. For weeks I had been trying to bring myself to take my kids' old plastic divided plates to the market, and each week when I'd start to pack them, great memories of all my kids' meals on them would come to mind, bring a warm smile to my face, and they would never make it to the flea market. (6 plates - each child had their own color - they loved eating out of them and it solved two problems, fights over favorite plates and different foods 'touching' each other)  But today... I decided that today was going to be the day they left.

A little more FYI to make it easier to understand. One thing I am aggressively doing is eliminating as many culinary plastics from my life as possible and replacing with glass, stainless steel, ceramic, etc. The more I learn about the dangers of consuming foods off of/stored in plastics, the more I want to get rid of them ALL.So this morning, as I was placing the divided plates into the box, I kept thinking how nice it would be to find some that were made out of stainless steel. I didn't know if there was such a thing, but for some uses (such as BBQs) I still liked the big, rectangular, divided plates. And I just kept thinking about how nice it would be to find some made of stainless steel, if there was such a thing.

WOW!!! At the flea market today, not long before I left. I went to drool over dreamily look at a vintage meat slicer one more time, when I realized it was sitting on top of 5 rectangular, stainless steel divided plates!!  Even better, they were so heavy (old army plates), the woman didn't want to keep moving them around and was selling them for $3 for all of them together. Yep, broke or not, I had to get them. It was obviously meant to be, today. My plates still haven't sold yet, but they are at my set-up now, and not coming back home.

Dusty always goes with me to the flea market. Big Bubba is way too big now to sit all day at the flea market in my portable puppy crate, but I didn't want to leave him at the mercy of the cats home by himself all day, either, so I decided to try and take him loose, too. When we started to leave, he ran right out the door with us and right on into the car. It turned out that I didn't have to worry about him running around at the flea market. He stayed close to my side all day. Every time he ventured a few feet then got a little nervous or insecure, he came back and sat on his favorite blankie next to me. And every time I walked away for a moment, he walked right along side me. He is such a loyal dog already! Several people were interested in him, but they either couldn't afford a dog, already had too many, REALLY wanted him but wife wouldn't let him, lived where dogs weren't allowed, etc. Big Bubba had a great time playing with all the kids that came through today and once he adjusted to the different surroundings, he had a blast romping and playing with Dusty and Zoie (the flea market Boxer).

And by the end of the day..... Big Bubba was one pooped puppy!