Fire Cider: Recipe and Trademark Controversy

Fire Cider has been a hot topic lately due to the trademark controversy surrounding the vinegar- and honey-based medicinal drink. The term "Fire Cider" was coined by herbalist Rosemary Gladstar in the 70s and she has published variations of the recipe in a number of her books, including Medicinal Herbs: A Beginner's Guide, which I referenced for the recipe below.

Shire City Herbals, an small East Coast business, started selling Fire Cider in a number of small health food stores across the nation, including my local co-op, The Merc. This would be great news, except Shire City Herbals has now gone on a mission to shut down any other small business that's also selling Fire Cider; they recently contacted a number of small producers on Etsy. This is akin to trademarking the term "Lemonade"  and then bitterly shutting down every child's lemonade stand that you come across. The fact that this recipe is very common among herbalist and is taught nationwide makes this trademark case even more complicated.

 Learn more in this article from Examiner entitled Herbalists Fighting Trademark of Fire Cider.
To watch a YouTube video of Rosemary Gladstar making Fire Cider, click here.

As a homage to Rosemary and a fat finger to greedy corporatism, I've decided to make Fire Cider today and to share the recipe with you guys. Enjoy it, and share at will!

Fire Cider - Herbal Vinegar

1 medium onion - chopped
4 -5 garlic cloves
3 -4 Tbsp ginger root
3 - 4 Tbsp horseradish root
1 jalapeno pepper 
2 C. apple cider vinegar (unpasteurized)
1/2 C. honey

(I left my camera at the office this weekend, so all of these photos were taken with an iPhone.)

Combine chopped onion, garlic, ginger, horseradish and jalapeno in a widemouthed, glass quart jar. Add enough warmed vinegar to cover them (warming the vinegar allows it to more actively draw out the properties of the herbs). Place Fire Cider in a warm spot and let sit for 3 to 4 weeks. Strain out the herbs and add honey to taste.

Take 1 tablespoon of Fire Cider a day or add it to salad dressings and marinades. At the first sign of a cold, take 1 to 2 tablespoons every 3 to 4 hours until your symptoms subside.

Fire Cider is essentially a tincture that uses apple cider vinegar instead of vodka. This makes it great for children and for incorporating into cooking. This healthful cider is spicy and sweet, and is ideal for winter sinus infections.

Flu-Fighting Ginger Tea

For the past month I've listened to everyone in my office cough, sneeze and blow their noses. I stood my ground and proudly represented the "healthy few" with the aid of my echinacea tinctures, plenty of sleep and my good friend the neti pot. However, last Monday I finally succumbed and came down with one helluva head cold. My sinuses were totally blocked and my head was pounding with the pressure.

It was time to take action, and I remembered reading about Stephen Bunner's immune-boosting, sinus-clearing ginger tea in the Mother Earth News article Homemade Herbal Medicines for Common Ailments. The recipe below is a variation of Stephen's recipe.

Ingredients

2 pieces ginger rhizome

1/2 lemon

1 tbsp honey

2 c. hot water

sprinkle of cayenne pepper.

Put the ginger root through a juicer to extract the pure essence. If you don't have a juicer, cut the ginger into disks and simmer in 2 cups water for 15 minutes to make ginger tea. Remove from heat and strain out the ginger bits. 

When juiced, the 2 pieces of ginger root made almost exactly 1 oz. of pure ginger essence. This is wonderfully spicy stuff, so use with caution. 

Pour hot water over the ginger juice, then add fresh lemon juice, however much cayenne pepper you can stand, and a spoonful of honey. You can really feel this spicy tea working on your sinuses; it tingles up in your nose like wasabi. Because ginger is such a fantastic digestive aid, this ginger tea would also make a great after-dinner drink. 

Skullcap Headache Tea

Skullcap (Scutellaria lateriflora) is a member of the mint family, and grows in shady areas near streams. It's a "nervine" herb, which means it acts as a tonic for the nervous system. Skullcap is a versatile nervine and it's useful for a whole range of disorders related to the nervous system including headaches, stress, menstrual tension and insomnia. To receive the full benefits of skullcap, it's recommended to use it over an extended period of time and in adequate dosages. Here's a recipe for Skullcap Headache Tea. The ingredients are pretty basic, which makes this an easy one to whip up when you feel a headache coming on.

Skullcap Tea for Headaches and Nervous Stress (Rosemary Gladstar's Recipe)

2 parts Skullcap
2 parts Lemon Balm
1/2 part Feverfew
4 parts Chamomile

Prepare as an infusion. Drink at least a quarter cup every half hour until the headache symptoms are gone.

I wrapped the ingredients in cheesecloth and secured the bundle with twine. I like this reusable teabag method. 

I chose to make my skullcap tea as a solar infusion. I let it steep in a nearby garden for about 4 hours in the sunlight.

The color difference before and after the infusion was made. It's not a very dark infusion. This tea was very mild and easy to drink. 

And this little guy just got to hang out and watch. 

Creating an Herbal Medicine Cabinet

Herbal medicine cabinet has arrived!

Lesson one in "The Science and Art of Herbology" course instructs you to take inventory of your current herbal medicine cabinet. Prior to this weekend, mine was seriously lacking. I had lots of dried chamomile that I had picked and dried from our office garden last year. I had about two cups of stevia powder that I had acquired through working on the Mother Earth News article, All About Growing the Stevia Plant. I had three supplements  - ginkgo, melatonin, and zinc - as well as some neem oil. My essential oils included cinnamon, sweet orange, peppermint, spearmint and marshmallow root. I'm not the type of person to collect products that I don't need only for them to gather dust around my house. I've decided, however, that in order to really take this herbal course the right way, I need to be able to whip up all sorts of elixirs, salves and teas with the blink of an eye. If my throat gets sore or my ear starts to ache, I want to be able to go experiment in the kitchen right away.

Stored in glass bottled with cork tops

So, with the help of my lovely mother who is also taking this course, my herbal medicine cabinet tripled this weekend. Saturday was like Christmas when my mom showed up with a trash bag full of dried herbs from Mountain Rose Herbs,  one of my favorite online herb shops. We spent the afternoon drinking tea, catching up, and sorting our herbs into newly labeled glass jars.

So now, in addition to my aforementioned medicine cabinet, the dried herbs that I have on hand are....

1. Peppermint (Mentha piperita)
2. Licorice Root (Glycyrrhiza glabra)
3. Lobelia (Lobelia infiata)
4. Catnip (Nepeta cataria)
5. Hops Flowers (Humulus lupulus)
6. Comfrey Root (Symphytum officinale)
7. Wood Betony (Stachys officinales)
8. Valerian (Valeriana officinalis)
9. Feverfew (Tanacetum Parthenium)
10. Lemon Balm (Melissa Officinalis)
11. St. John's Wort (Hypericum perforatum)
12. Scullcap (Scutellaria barbata)

With all these new herbs on hand I'm ready for less reading and more doing.

Herbal Home Study Course has Arrived!

The Science and Art of Herbalism 

Look what's here! I am soo excited to begin Rosemary Gladstar's home study course, The Science and Art of Herbalism.  It's up to me what time frame I finish this in, but my goal is to complete the 12 course packets within one year. I also just found out my enthusiasm is contagious and my mom will be joining me on this adventure! We're going to meet at our family's lake house every 3 weeks to experiment with making salves, tinctures and all the other herbal preparations waiting inside these pages.

This course includes materia medica, wild plant identification, tons of hands-on preparations and healing information on everything from pets and children to the nervous system. It will take us into kitchens, gardens, weedy lots, herb stores and apothecaries as well as the woodlands and fields to look for plant medicine. Enough writing, let the adventures begin!

Sourdough starter from Robin

Look what arrived today! Robin (our food editor) found out about this great family who has carefully nurtured the same sourdough starter for 150 years. The original starter was actually used on the Oregon Trail. Bringing this culture back to life is a bit Jurassic Park like...you find an old artifact with a bit of life in it an Voila! a part of history is brought back to life in our modern kitchens. I invested in a cast iron dutch oven this weekend to cook artisan bread right at home. I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

Making PawPaw Jelly

Pawpaw fruit hiding in the trees.

Once we correctly identified the mystery fruit as the edible pawpaw we knew we had to return for more. The next morning Chris and I met my dad at Kill Creek Park where we unloaded the dogs and took off in search of more pawpaws. We carried little Trudy across the rushing creek as the other dogs bound easily across. We once again let our noses sniff the way to the enticing pawpaw patch. 

Most of the ripe pawpaws had fallen off the small, shade loving trees. They all landed, somewhat bruised, among piles of fallen leaves. Some pawpaws, however, had managed to cling on for a while longer, and for those we stretched and jumped or shook the trees violently to make them fall to the ground. After we had a full bag of the green, mango tasting fruit we called for the dogs and trekked back to the cars. We ran into an elderly couple who curiously inquired about our nearly bursting, dripping bags. We explained to them that we were foraging these fruits for jelly and they smiled nervously, not sure if they should view us as adventurous foodies or scavenging beggars...we probably looked more like the latter.

A full bag of foraged pawpaws.

In our excitement about pawpaw's we learned that the fruit is native to Eastern North America and migrated as far west as Kansas and Texas thanks to the American Indians. The pawpaw tree grows to be 12 to 20 feet tall and prefers filtered sunlight. The pawpaws we found were small trees, all clustered together in a shady patch. Pawpaw trees are relatively disease resistant and have a natural resistance to Oak Root Fungus. Bees, for some reason, are not attracted to pawpaw flowers which leaves pollinating to less enthusiastic creatures and the wind. Commercial growers of pawpaws have to hand pollinate. The pawpaw is the largest native fruit of North America.

Chris removing the pawpaw skins.

The fruit looks and smells like a mango but has a custardy consistency. In fact it even belongs to the tropical custard apple family.The flavor is very strong and when I eat my pawpaw jelly on toast I spread it fairly thin. The pawpaw is rich in vitamins A and C as well as the minerals magnesium, zinc, iron, copper and manganese. The pawpaw fruit is also good for the skin, and when blended with yogurt and applied topically it treats both acne and cellulite.

Back at the house we pulled up this recipe for Pawpaw Jam and went to town. We had a great time  getting our hands all sticky with pawpaw juice and laughing about the shocked couple from the woods. We loved the excitement of stumbling across a mystery fruit in the land we all thought we knew so well and then returning to forage and store it for a later time. I now feel as though I have a deeper connection to those woods and will remember from here on out that the end of September is pawpaw season. I'm inspired to learn what else grows around here, and it's season, for future foraging expeditions. 

We swirled in cloves, allspice, cinnamon and ginger.

Pawpaw Jelly

Ingredients

• You need about 4 pounds of fresh paw paws peeled and seeded OR 6 cups of Paw Paw Puree (I used a puree)
• ¾ cup of apple cider Vinegar
• ½ cup of water
• 1/3 cup of Bourbon (optional but gives a wonderful background) 
• 5 cups of Pure Cane Sugar
• 1 cup of brown sugar (dark if you have it)
• 1 teaspoon ground Cloves
• 1 teaspoon ground Allspice
• ¼ teaspoon ground Ginger
• 1 Tablespoon Cinnamon (I think this was a little heavy….add cinnamon to taste)
• 6 oz of liquid pectin

Method

1. Start water bath canner boiling.

2. Sterilize jars, lids and rings.

3. Line a baking tray with aluminum foil and place jars in position.

This "jar lifter" was our favorite tool.
It allowed us to drop the jars into
the water bath without getting burned
or splashed.

4. In a heavy saucepan, add paw paws and water. Bring to a slow boil, being watchful not to scorch.

5. Bring down to a simmer, and cook for about 10 minutes. Remove from heat.

6. You could strain mixture at this juncture. I did not.

7. Add cider, bourbon and sugars at this point. (You might like to add a touch of vanilla too) Return to heat, simmering for about 30 minutes. If after adding all ingredients the mix seems too thick, add a little more water…not much.

8. Stir frequently.

9. The mixture will change appearance and become thick. If you place a metal spoon in the mix, pull it out and it “sheets” I think it is ready. My friend Leslie suggests that for really thick jam use the spoon test…running your finger down back of spoon. If the mix stays separated it is done.

10. Start water simmering for lids and rings if you haven’t already.

11. At this point, the original recipe says to add 6 ounces (1 pack) of liquid pectin. I suspect this is being overly cautious…..but I did include the pectin.

12. Bring up to rolling boil and boil for one minute. Remove from heat.

13. Fill jars leaving about 1/4 inch headspace from the rim. Wipe rims and edges making sure there is no jam to prohibit a good seal.
Add lids and place rings on finger tight.

14. Place in a water bath canner. Bring canner back up to boil and process 10 minutes.

Remove jars, placing in an area free from drafts. Leave overnight, giving jars time to seal.
Check lids for proper seal. Any unsealed jars can be reprocessed, or refrigerated for immediate use.
Store in a cool place, out of direct sunlight.

Makes about 10 Jelly Jars (8 ounces)

The finished product! We had extra pawpaws and ended up
with 12 jars! All the more for gifts.