By the time September rolls around, the summer garden and markets have mostly had their say. The jars of dried herbs are stacking up, the freezer is filling up, and my family is back to wearing sweaters in the morning. This is when I start thinking about my herbal pantry and what needs restocking and what can go.
If you look up “pantry” in the dictionary, you’ll get something like: Room cupboard or closet used for food provision and storage. That’s not wrong, but it’s not the whole story.
My definition: Your herbal kitchen pantry is the place where you bring the earth into your home and ask the abundance of the harvest to nourish, heal, and inspire. It is where you live into a very personal art form of how to creatively make herbal medicines and weave herbs into your meals as much as possible. Your pantry is more than storage, it’s an ecosystem. It’s the place where your hands and heart meet to transform food and herbs into nourishment that keeps you healthy and helps you live well.
And as far as the location of your herbal pantry, it isn’t just the cupboard where you keep jars of herbs. It encompasses multiple spaces throughout your kitchen and home where you reach for herbal inspiration. It’s the turntable of spice blends on the dining table and the spice rack by the stove. The hydration corner where you make tea, the table where you sort your herbs and make herbal condiments, and even that little section in the fridge where you store fresh herbs. These spaces form the modern hearth, the heart of the home that has traditionally served as the center of wellness and connection.
How you feel in your herbal kitchen pantry matters. Many of us can relate to entering a messy pantry and kitchen and immediately feeling our stress levels rise!
Take a moment for this simple self-reflection exercise:
I see September as a transitional month. Whatever I’ve gathered from summer is now in the house even though it still may need garbling, sorting, or crafting into a formula. This gives me a good idea of what I still need to source and craft for the winter. This is the perfect time to take stock and do a good clean-out.
When you clean out and make room for the new harvest it opens space for dreaming into building more beauty and flow into your hearth.
Summer is waning, yet warmth still peaks even as days are shorter. Summer’s heat has accumulated in the environment and our bodies. Dryness peaks in our skin just as it does in the falling leaves. It’s time to shift our pantry staples to reflect the seasonal fluctuation and in general, seek to moisten and temper the dryness while dancing back and forth between hot and cold. Time to tuck away the cooling mint, hibiscus and chrysanthemum and reach for nourishing herbs to balance the dryness with warming or cooling notes depending on which way the weather goes each day.
This quarterly reset of pulling seasonal allies to the front of what you use is part of the rhythm of a functional herbal pantry. What are your favorite autumn/winter staples that you’ll focus on this year?
The Living Herbal Pantry
Your pantry is the living, breathing hearth that reflects the heart of wellness in your home. It isn’t just storage but a part of your health care, your home culture, and your relationship with nature. Through an intentional September pantry reset, you end up with tidier cabinets and also a renewed connection to the wisdom of seasonal living and healing through nourishment. Bless the space with your attention and care.
Topics: Herbalism, Green Living, Herbalist Corner
Kami McBride’s 35 years of teaching herbal medicine is steeped in her calling to inspire a cultural shift that embraces taking care of our bodies with healing herbs, a deep connection with the earth, and a lifestyle that passes this knowledge on to our children. She is the author of The Herbal Kitchen and has taught herbal medicine at the University of California, San Francisco School of Nursing. Her online courses fuel the home herbalism movement to revitalize our relationship with the plant world and use herbalism for home wellness care. To learn more from Kami, visit www.KamiMcBride.com.
By the time September rolls around, the summer garden and markets have mostly had their say. The jars of dried herbs are stacking up, the freezer is filling up, and my family is back to wearing sweaters in the morning. This is when I start thinking about my herbal pantry and what needs restocking and what can go.
If you look up “pantry” in the dictionary, you’ll get something like: Room cupboard or closet used for food provision and storage. That’s not wrong, but it’s not the whole story.
My definition: Your herbal kitchen pantry is the place where you bring the earth into your home and ask the abundance of the harvest to nourish, heal, and inspire. It is where you live into a very personal art form of how to creatively make herbal medicines and weave herbs into your meals as much as possible. Your pantry is more than storage, it’s an ecosystem. It’s the place where your hands and heart meet to transform food and herbs into nourishment that keeps you healthy and helps you live well.
And as far as the location of your herbal pantry, it isn’t just the cupboard where you keep jars of herbs. It encompasses multiple spaces throughout your kitchen and home where you reach for herbal inspiration. It’s the turntable of spice blends on the dining table and the spice rack by the stove. The hydration corner where you make tea, the table where you sort your herbs and make herbal condiments, and even that little section in the fridge where you store fresh herbs. These spaces form the modern hearth, the heart of the home that has traditionally served as the center of wellness and connection.
How you feel in your herbal kitchen pantry matters. Many of us can relate to entering a messy pantry and kitchen and immediately feeling our stress levels rise!
Take a moment for this simple self-reflection exercise:
I see September as a transitional month. Whatever I’ve gathered from summer is now in the house even though it still may need garbling, sorting, or crafting into a formula. This gives me a good idea of what I still need to source and craft for the winter. This is the perfect time to take stock and do a good clean-out.
When you clean out and make room for the new harvest it opens space for dreaming into building more beauty and flow into your hearth.
Summer is waning, yet warmth still peaks even as days are shorter. Summer’s heat has accumulated in the environment and our bodies. Dryness peaks in our skin just as it does in the falling leaves. It’s time to shift our pantry staples to reflect the seasonal fluctuation and in general, seek to moisten and temper the dryness while dancing back and forth between hot and cold. Time to tuck away the cooling mint, hibiscus and chrysanthemum and reach for nourishing herbs to balance the dryness with warming or cooling notes depending on which way the weather goes each day.
This quarterly reset of pulling seasonal allies to the front of what you use is part of the rhythm of a functional herbal pantry. What are your favorite autumn/winter staples that you’ll focus on this year?
The Living Herbal Pantry
Your pantry is the living, breathing hearth that reflects the heart of wellness in your home. It isn’t just storage but a part of your health care, your home culture, and your relationship with nature. Through an intentional September pantry reset, you end up with tidier cabinets and also a renewed connection to the wisdom of seasonal living and healing through nourishment. Bless the space with your attention and care.
Topics: Herbalism, Green Living, Herbalist Corner
Kami McBride’s 35 years of teaching herbal medicine is steeped in her calling to inspire a cultural shift that embraces taking care of our bodies with healing herbs, a deep connection with the earth, and a lifestyle that passes this knowledge on to our children. She is the author of The Herbal Kitchen and has taught herbal medicine at the University of California, San Francisco School of Nursing. Her online courses fuel the home herbalism movement to revitalize our relationship with the plant world and use herbalism for home wellness care. To learn more from Kami, visit www.KamiMcBride.com.
