Comments

Episode-2113- Cat Ellis on Self Reliance though Herbal Medicine — 11 Comments

  1. Great interview, one thing which confused me was the mention of elderberry and the flowers from elderberry.

    I had always heard growing up that all parts of the elderberry tree were very poisoning, especially the berries ?

    Very interesting guest overall and easy to listen to, good presentation.

    I would be interested in knowing the exact recipe for the herbal respiratory treatment remedy which Cat used to quickly recover from a respiratory infection which led her into herbal medicine.

    • If elderberry was poison I would be dead long ago. Large amounts of raw elderberry can make you sick though. Elderflower is a well known herb, flavor agent, part of my famous three flowers blend mead and delicious in fritters.

  2. We used to make elderfower cordial each year, from -yes- the flowers, being careful to leave some to become berries. It made a refreshing summer drink and can be frozen as ice cubes to add to water to melt and make a cold drink. Still here to tell it. It grows fast and is quite tough. Sadly we built on it and it is no more.

  3. We used to make ink from the dark red maroon coloured berries to use in scrapey nibbed cartridge and fountain pens just for the fun of it and to annoy our teachers.

    Must have been an early expression of survivalism.

    The berries looked very appealing but patents and teachers warned us not to eat them.

    I wonder could there be a difference between the European Elderberry and the American elderberry, could there be several variences of the tree.

  4. I just visited Cat’s webside, its guite good, amazing how one web site can lead to another of similar community.
    Wondering can I buy Cats book through TSPC from Amazon.

  5. Hey, Jack, you mentioned a bedtime tea that smells like gym socks but works well for sleep. As a chronic insomniac, could I ask you for the recipe?

  6. I know it’s the silliest thing to fixate on in this podcast, but the mention of the two-space vs one-space after a period rule had me laughing. I’m just a few years younger than Jack, and I got stuck smack dab on that rule switch. In junior high our typing class still used typewriters, and the older teacher there beat the two-spaces rule into us there. And so the habit tends to stick even though I’ve heard people complain about us “two-spacers” ever since (the only time I consistently single-space are with my webcomics). I even had one obnoxious GenY / older-Millenial coworker say he’d never hire a person who used two spaces after a period on their resume. I laughed my ass off, and from then on I made sure to use two spaces in every subsequent email that included him… 😉