It seems like every Spring I plant interesting-sounding plants and then at the end of the summer I wonder what to do with them. After all there's only so much herb-infused vinegar one family can possibly consume in a year.
So back in the day, when I was making soap and stuff, I also made Artist's Hand Salve from the overabundance of comfrey that was growing wild at our home in Woodstock, NY, Mezza Luna Farm. Many culinary herbs and garden flowers have natural healing properties. Rosemary, lemon balm and rose petals are some of my favorites.
Making herbal salves is no more complicated that making homemade salad dressing if you think about it--the only thing that's different is infusing the oils with the herbs, but that's kind of like making a cup of tea...check it out:
note: This is more of a method than an actual recipe--adjust to suit your preferred level of waxiness vs oiliness
- Gather your fresh-picked herbs (lavender, comfrey, etc) and clean them--dirty salve is just gross!
- Lay them out to dry--if you have a screen to do that on that's great but you can use a baking sheet or whatever--a piece of paper will work.
- Put the dried herbs in a cooking pot and cover with oil. Use a 1:1 ratio. If you have a crock pot that will work just great but anything non-reactive will work. As far as the type of oil, olive oil will be fabulous but it's also fun to experiment with other types. Most health food store have organic coconut oil, almond oil, hemp oil, etc.
- Heat the oil mixture for at least 3 hours. Like sun tea you can also put your mixture in a large jar and put it in the sun for the afternoon.
- When the infused oil has cooled strain it through cheesecloth. Put the mixture back into your cooking pot.
- Add beeswax to the infused oil and heat slowly until the wax has melted. Use 1 part wax to 4 parts oil--more or less depending on how solid you want it to be. Test it on the back of a cold spoon.Now you can add some essential oils if you'd like. And a couple of vitamin E capsules would be a nice addition. NOTE: If you want it to be more like a LUSH body butter or a massage bar thing you can pour it into a mold and then wrap it in parchement--something like a muffin tin works well. Look around and you;ll be surprised at what you could use for a mold--the single serving of Pringles --snack stacks?--would be perfect with their handy little shape...not that I'm familiar with vast quantities of potato chips or anything...
- That's it! Pour your salve into little pots or and let them cool. Wow!
I have about a zillion recipes from my Mezza Luna Farm days--I'll post more as I go. And I'll try to be a little more exact on the measurements on most of them but for this one it's one of those things that you can adjust so the quanities are just a general guideline.
