k-brow: in which Facebook has me drinking nettles

I've been spending a lot of time messing around on Facebook, a phenom I attribute to DisKnit, and ALL my other VA friends, who've seemed to join en masse, thus tempting me to while away my hours writing on everybody's walls. Most of this facebooking has been fritterlicious, but a couple of useful things have come out of it. One, finding out that my best friend from high school is a huge Sarah Palin fan. Not such happymaking news, that. But we've been pretty committed to staying out of judging each others' politics; we both are well aware of why we took our separate politico-spiritual paths. The other result of all this internetterie is an ongoing middle-age-lady-health discussion I am having with a college friend, Nancy, who has recently taken up the Susun Weed doctrine of nourishing herbal infusions and herbal allies. Nancy was making and drinking daily doses of nettle tea, and had a friend who swore by this, as a means of raising energy levels, and general feelings of well-being. Now I've been a fan of Susun's, myself, and like her writings, which come to me in a little monthly e-zine. So I decided to join Nancy in her experiment in nettle brewing. I've drunk infusions of raspberry leaf and red clover before, but not for long periods of time; just a cup or two, here and there. Our experiment is going to be a month long, through which we'll note any results.

I ordered the nettle leaf from Mountain Rose Herbs (no link because I'm lazy - go google it yourself) and got 1/2 lb. for about $8, which may or may not last me a month.

I brew it up at night, a quart at a time: that's a quart of water, boiled, with a handful of the leaf tossed in. Covered and left to infuse all night at room temperature, then strained and refrigerated in the morning.

It's a beautiful bottle green that just doesn't show up in these pix. I mean to photo it in the sun, but we've had no sun to speak of, or at least when I am at liberty to take pictures.

It doesn't taste bad. I've been drinking about 3 cups of the stuff a day; it has a nice green taste. I don't sweeten it, but I read somewhere that one can add honey, or go the other route and use it as a base for a bit of miso paste.

Yum. We love the precious nettle elixir.
Of course this test is also coming at a time when I'm taking feverfew and magnesium supplements for the migraine madness, so the study isn't exactly scientific, but I'm told it can improve sleep, and can also diminish some aches and pains in the joints. I know nettles are very high in vitamin C and calcium.

In other news, I finished knitting all the parts of Minimalist. Which turned out to be a sort of nettle green. I need to stitch them together, a task which, thus far, I have not worked up to. I started a sock, but it just seemed like too much work, too many tiny little stitches, so I frogged it. I'm itching to start something, but suppose I'll just apply myself to the continued chugging along on the UFO pile. Next up; finishing the Must Have, which lacks 2 sleeves from being done. Aran sleeves seem awfully long when you're looking at finishing 2 of them.