The cupboard
Kitchen herbs & spices
Filter by element or search a plant. Traditional kitchen and folk use — four tastes, not a clinic monograph.
Water· saltSalt is cooling and barely a taste. These plants dry first, then move fluid — and water follows. They are mineral salts, not table salt: building, coating to sensitive membranes, thinning stuck mucous, supporting kidneys and the kreb-cycle minerals of muscle and nerve.
4 plants
Nettle
Urtica dioica
A green salt — the mineral broth of the hedgerow.
Stiff joints · Hollow energy · Irritable skin
Mineralize, soothe, and restore fluid
Celery seed
Apium graveolens
A salty seed for a waterlogged, creaky body.
Puffiness · Stiff joints
Mineralize, soothe, and restore fluid
Alfalfa
Medicago sativa
A deep-rooted green salt — minerals from the clay, up into the leaf.
Hollow energy · Stiff joints · Puffiness
Mineralize, soothe, and restore fluid
Horsetail
Equisetum arvense
A silica salt — the joint-and-tooth mineral of the ditch bank.
Stiff joints · Puffiness · Irritable skin
Mineralize, soothe, and restore fluid