| Round about this time of year, I usually start looking at my dried herb stock from the previous harvest and assessing what really needs using up to make way for the fresh growth promised in the coming months. There are many ways to utilise the properties of dried herbs and my standard remedial quick fix is in simply brewing up a pot of tea but that's certainly not the limit of their application. As well as in teas and cooking, many plants can really come into their own in topical treatments and skin care. Fats are great carriers of nutrients such as vitamins and while using oil on your skin is certainly not going to give you the same kind of dose as ingestion, dermal absorption can still be effective. In fact, while I was studying aromatherapy, we were taught that around 60% of what goes on your skin will make its way in to your system. |  Some Rather Optimistic Solar Infusion! |
 | Distilled essential oils have their place but they're so volatile that you really need to use them pretty quickly before they've evaporated. An alternative that's also much more feasible for home production is oil infusion. There are a couple of easy methods that I employ, depending upon how much of a hurry I'm in; solar or heat infusion. Solar infusion simply requires your herbs and oil to be added to a glass vessel with a good seal and placed on a sunny window sill for a couple of weeks. It'll need a bit of monitoring to make sure the herbs stay below the surface of the oil. I also like to give it a good shake a couple of times a day, or whenever I remember, to help the process along. |
Heat infusion is a little more involved; with your herbs and oil in a good heavy saucepan, you need to be giving the blend enough heat for the herbs to release their compounds but you're certainly not aiming for a fry-up! Low and slow is the best method. Some sources even recommend heating to less that 40°C for three days! That's not practical enough for me so I'll just pop it on as low as I can while I'm pottering in the kitchen, maybe a few hours if it's a busy morning. When it's cool, it can be strained into bottles and used. For either of these methods, it's good practice to make sure your glass vessel is sterilised with boiling water but do make sure its completely air dried before adding any oil. With the solar method, you also want to allow plenty of space in your jar, to give it a shake every so often and to make sure the herbs don't swell so much they come above the level of the oil. If that happens, you'll need to top up with a bit more oil.
Yarrow, Lemon Balm and Calendula; Heat and Solar Infusion:
| | For my latest infusion, I'm trying a mixture of both solar and heat methods! I've got my blend in a bottle that can sit on the window sill when the sun is out but I've been letting it sit on the storage heater in the kitchen at night and on cloudy, cold days, which, it seems we've been having more often than not! This time I'm using yarrow (leaves and flowers), lemon balm (leaves) and calendula (flowers), all of which are often used in skin preparations as soothing, uplifting and gladdening herbs. I'm using sweet almond oil as my carrier, a classic, nourishing, skin friendly tonic! After a week or two, when I'm happy that its had enough time, sun and gentle heat to do the work I'll be using it primarily as a topical oil for dry skin but it would also be totally safe to use as the base for a summery salad dressing... Hmm. Summmery... Well, we live in hope! It's got to come eventually! |
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