Favorite Homemade Body Butter
Wintertime necessitates the use of double-duty moisturizers that protect us from both the cold wind outside and the heated, super-dry air inside—something more emollient and longer-lasting than what we might use in the summer months. Body butters to the rescue! Butters provide heavier moisturizing for dry winter conditions, are protective of the skin, and are…
Cinnamon for Health: More than Just a Holiday Spice
As a spice, cinnamon plays such a popular role in our breakfast cereals, holiday desserts like pumpkin pie, hot apple cider, and other staples of our cuisine that we tend to forget that it has medicinal properties as well. And while it might not surprise us to learn of its value as an herb, how…
Jazzy Vegetarian Classics Cookbook Review
I have heard many refer to vegans as being alien-like, as if their choices are out of this world. However, it seems like our culture is beginning to finally slow down and notice the damage done in a fast paced lifestyle of convenience over consciousness. We have lost our way and have become disconnected from…
How to Create a Reflection Garden in 4 Steps
With the coming of winter, many of us start to miss time in our gardens. And why shouldn’t we? Our garden is a special, dedicated place. We go to great effort to cultivate the land so that plants of our choosing can have a home. We till the soil, fertilize it, and make sure that…
5 Steps to Increase Activity with Sun Meditation
Soon, daylight savings time will be ending for most of the country. This little tweaking of our schedules began in the 20th century when various countries around the world wanted to create more daylight in the evenings for increased recreational and commercial activity after work. By turning our clocks back as we are about to…
Your Solution to the Winter Blues
With the coming of winter, many things will change. The days will be shorter, and the weather will be colder. But perhaps most significantly, the coming months can lead to much darker feelings. This is to be expected, as whether or not we’re one of the approximately 20% of Americans who suffer from some form…
Sweet Potato Kale Sauté
In the first half of our vegan cooking series, we discussed different ways to eat kale, how to cook vegan fare on a budget and which meals have large amounts of protein. This yummy Sweet Potato Kale Sauté incorporates all of those aspects! It takes hardly any time to prepare, costs about $1 per serving…
Holistic Business Owner Shares Her Experience Taking HANE’s Online Herbal Programs
We have had the pleasure of getting to know some our students both personally and academically through online forums, emails and testimonials. Laura West, the owner of Divine Lotus Healing in Boston and a student in our online programs, is just one of many members we have come to know through our community. Laura recently finished the Introductory Herbal Course…
3 Easy Steps to Fix a Bad Day
All of us have bad days. Whether we’ve been overwhelmed at work, had a frustrating conversation with our significant other, had to deal with a problem at our child’s school, or some other source of stress, each of us has gotten to the point where all we want to do is veg out in front…
Stop and Smell the Cultivars
These days, it is very easy to get overwhelmed by all of the stimuli around us. We might have a particularly stressful day at work, be dealing with a health issue in our family, or even just get overwhelmed by a dozen honking horns on the way home from picking our kids up from school….
Five Kitchen Herbs for Cold Season
Tucked away in our kitchen pantries and cupboards, in our windowsills and gardens, are familiar and friendly herbal mainstays that are as healing as they are flavorful. Like all herbs, culinary herbs also contain minerals, vitamins, and active constituents, and when used properly and in appropriate amounts, can offer potent and comforting options for common…
3 Easy Ways To Dry Herbs
As summer winds down, things change. The children go back to school, the days are getting shorter, and gardening season is drawing to a close. Given this, you may be wondering what to do with the herbal bounty still growing in your garden. Must you make pesto with all of your basil? Must you take…
3 Herbs For Anxiety
Anxiety can be a problem for many of us. Sometimes, we feel anxious and stressed after a particularly busy day of deadlines, errands, and fires needing to be put out. Others of us may have more long-term, chronic struggles with anxiety. Feeling unsettled in this way can not only be taxing on our mood but…
5 Tips for Getting a Start on Next Year’s Garden
With the coming of fall, it can be daunting to be faced with six months of very little gardening to do. Or, perhaps you decided halfway through the summer that you’d like to take up gardening but felt you missed an opportunity to grow anything this year. But just because we’re about to enter a…
HANE’s Top 10: The Best Vegan Books
The best vegan books – well, almost all vegan – brought to you by Lisa Kelly, the founder, personal chef, and blogger of The Vegan Pact. Lisa is joining HANE this September through November for the Vegan Cooking Series in Bedford, MA. We’ll be whipping up beginner vegan meals and more advanced plant-based entrées, mastering raw…
Cacao Dusted Peanut Butter Cookies
Mmmm, the warm, cozy smell of peanut butter cookies baking in the oven. What other scent is more beloved? Don’t let these healthy, almost raw cookies fool you – they spent not a nanosecond in the oven. They are also gluten and wheat free, without flour, refined sugars, eggs, or butter. What?? Not exactly like…
Oats: Herbs We Love For Summer
Oats (Avena sativa) and their versatile components have been used for everything from stuffing mattresses, poultices, facial scrubs, cereal, teas, and baths. This small wonder, native to Northern Europe, packs a powerful nutritional punch with its protein, B-vitamins, calcium, and other minerals.
Licorice and Ginger: Herbal Decongestants
For many of us, the worst thing about getting a cold is the seemingly interminable congestion that takes over our respiratory system. It’s distracting enough to make us miserable, but isn’t enough of an issue to allow us to call in sick from work or school. And not only does the offending mucus seem to…
How to Grow Fresh Basil
Whether it’s to cleanse the blood, act as an anti-inflammatory, or simply to make pesto for an Italian feast, basil can be a valuable staple of an herbalist’s kitchen and a delicious way to ensure continued health. Though it’s easy enough to buy fresh basil at the store, it’s an herb that’s incredibly easy to…
Catnip: Herbs We Love For Summer
Catnip (Nepeta cataria) or catmint, is probably best known as a stimulant for cats, inducing euphoria and friskiness. The scent alone is irresistible to most felines—my own kitty immediately darts into the kitchen the moment I open my jar of catnip. So as not to undermine her feline superiority, I share a pinch with her before adding…
Herbs for Prostate Health
It’s a scenario familiar to many aging men: he goes to bed, much as he has for decades, only to wake up two, three, or even four times to go to the bathroom to urinate. It’s difficult for him to urinate regardless of the time of day, for the urine dribbles out and is hard…
Rose: Herbs We Love For Summer
Rose. The Queen of Flowers has origins in the Middle East, and has been cultivated and cherished the world over since antiquity. The oldest known rose bush is believed to be at least 1000 years old, growing on the walls of the Cathedral of Hildesheim, in Germany. Subject of many a sonnet and poem, lauded…
Chamomile: Herbs We Love For Summer
German chamomile (Matricaria recutita) is a delicate, apple-scented member of the Asteraceae or daisy family, and makes one of the most popular teas in the world. A cooling and calming herb, chamomile is beloved by herbalist and lay person alike! Chamomile is an antispasmodic, relaxing the smooth muscles throughout the body including the digestive track. When…
Making the Connection
Sitting down to eat breakfast, I began to look around. Showing prominently in the center of the table was the loaf of 7 grain bread used to make our toast, but there was also cereal of many grains, almond milk, coffee, half-and-half, orange juice, fresh berries, butter, jam, almond butter, honey, flax seeds, chia seeds,…
The China Study Cookbook Review & Giveaway
What one chooses to eat is often based on emotion and addictions, unconscious habits, and unquestioned cultural mores. Because how we eat affects not just our bodies, but the quality of our land, water, and air; human rights; and other beings, lifting food and diet out of the realm of the unconscious and into the…
Asparagus Crepes Recipe
The recent cold snap (80 degrees instead of 100) gave me an opportunity to fire up the stove and experiment with a yummy looking recipe I’d been eyeing in The China Study Cookbook, by Leanne Campbell, PhD. The whole foods recipes are based on the research findings of Campbell’s father, T. Colin Campbell, who promotes a…
Hibiscus: Herbs We Love For Summer
Hibiscus, also known as Jamaica flower, is one of our very favorite herbs for summer because, like spearmint, its flavor is easily infused into cold water—heating up a tea pot is unnecessary! Hibiscus is a showy member of the Malvaceae (mallow) family native to subtropics and tropics around the world and appears in a variety…
A Simple Solution for More Rejuvenating Sleep
Since we were young we have been taught the value of getting a good night’s sleep. Sleep does everything from helping us to rejuvenate our minds to ensuring that the cells in our bodies repair themselves. But while many of us are familiar with the benefits of sleep, what if there was a way for…
Garden Wellness
“[People have] has sought out plants with medicinal properties since time immemorial. Evidence of this are the-thousand-year-old traditions and records of popular healing. Even in this great age of great development and progress in the fields of chemistry [and] pharmaceuticals,…plants have lost none of their importance.” Botanical Wellness Herbalism is the oldest form of wellness….
Basil: Herbs We Love For Summer
Culinary herbs are so often overlooked as medicine. But great power lies in our humble spice jars and kitchen windowsill plants, including basil! Loaded with carotenoids as well as vitamins K and C, basil is also antibacterial. It’s used to ease nausea and cramping, and for irritability, depression, anxiety, and sleeping problems. Externally, basil repels…
