My Summer

Pumpkin, with small cup for size comparison

It's been so long since I've posted that I actually started feeling a little guilty.  The truth of the matter is is that I've gotten a little bored with writing about herb formulas.  Plus the fact that my extract pharmacy has grown to over sixty herb extracts, so I'm more in the habit of whipping up custom formulas as the need arises (not that I don't keep the favorites in stock - allergy formula, cold/flu formula, perimenopausal formula, pain formula, cancer support formula, etc. - so feel free to contact me if you are interested in purchasing some).  But most of all, the main reason I haven't been writing is that I've been having too much fun!  Let me tell you about my summer so far:

It started off with a zero-gravity chair that my wonderful wife Annette gave me for my birthday.  Have you ever tried one of these things?  You sit down in it, then the thing stretches out and back and you are suspended like an astronaut in space. It's so comfortable that you really don't want to do anything else!  It has become an indispensable part of my daily heliotherapy practice.

Annette and Kaz in Big Sur

One of the best things about summer is that it's when my daughter Sara comes home from college and we get to be with her more than a few days at a time.  So it's been great hanging out with her, going to the river, hiking, having the whole family back together again.  Earlier in the summer, she and Dylan and I made a large batch of kimchi-style pickles that we called We Qi (Kimchi!  No, it's Kaz Qi!  No, we're all making it so it's We Qi!), some of which they then took on their trip to Montana.  Lukas of course is on summer vacation too, which he is enjoying to the max - getting to sleep in, playing on the Xbox with friends, going to the beach, animating, etc.  Annette and I continue to be the working shlubbs who support all this leisure activity going on around us.  Well, I shouldn't complain too hard; Annette and I got to get away for a few days in June to celebrate our 25th anniversary with a trip to Big Sur, which was really wonderful (ah, the Gorge!  The coast!  The purple sand!  Deetjen's!  Hot tub!).  Plus, after my busiest month ever in June my practice has hit a predictable summer slump, giving me all the more time to work in the garden.

Speaking of which, my garden has been super-prolific.  The star of the season is a volunteer pumpkin plant who picked the perfect spot to sprout and has since taken over a third of the garden.  Now there are five pumpkins, the largest of which is over fifty inches around!  Our plum trees fruited like crazy this year, and for several days I was picking fifty or more plums daily, most of which I smushed and fermented in five-gallon buckets to turn into plum liquor (more on that in a minute).  Our fig tree was also more productive than ever; it seems like every year we live here it makes more fruit.  I never really liked figs that much but after tasting this sweet mild green/yellow variety, I am a convert.  I planted an artichoke for the first time ever and we have enjoyed five or six delicious pan-seared, wine-steamed artichokes so far (thank you Akemi for your splendid example of "living the dream," and the recipe).  The leaves of this plant make a strong and delicious bitter that's great for the liver and gallbladder and is an essential ingredient in my Indian Summer Bitters. What else has been growing?  Lettuce, radish, daikon, zucchinis a few pounds per week, and eight or nine tomato plants, mostly Purple Giants, who are still green and not yet giant, though promising-looking.  Finally, I have five specimens of young ashitaba - three to nibble on over the next couple years, and two to harvest at their peak in a few months to make a full-strength fresh extract.  Ashitaba is a delicious Japanese herb/vegetable that is one of the most vibrant plants I know, and good for you in so many ways.  (Thank you Darren for donating the babies!  I gave most of them away and am really enjoying the company of these five).

Herbwise, I've been busy in the field, in the garden, and in the lab.  Sara and I picked and blended some fresh gotu kola this morning.  Last week we spent the day at the river and collected hedge nettle on the way home (hedge nettle, the fuzzy "stink mint" so emblematic of our redwood forests, is a medicine I've never prepared or used before.  It's supposed to be a decent anti-inflammatory, and especially good for headaches).  A few weeks ago I distilled three cases of red wine generously donated by a patient, thus ending up with wine liquor which I keep at 45%, 75%, and 85% ethanol for various extraction and enjoyment purposes.  Currently in development: gotu kola and tulsi (holy basil) leaf and flower liqueurs.  My thinking is that gotu kola and tulsi are both excellent and delicious adaptogenic tonics that would be of great benefit to my cancer patients - the gotu kola to treat or potentially prevent the debilitating peripheral neuropathy that often accompanies chemotherapy, and tulsi whose radioprotective flavonoids show promise in protecting healthy cells during radiation.  Plus, especially if you're already swallowing tons of pills each day, what better way to take your herbs than a yummy end-of-the-day schnaps!

Earlier this week I distilled the ten gallons of fermented plums, and tomorrow is a Ladle Day so I will superstitiously and auspiciously distill it a second time to clean it up for final bottling.  Part of the resultant plum liquor will be used to make a new product I intend to call Plum3 ("plum cubed"): fresh plums macerated in plum liquor for half a year, then distilling the liqueur-soaked plums and adding the distillate back to the liqueur for intense full-spectrum plumminess.  Mmm... I can hardly wait!

Still ahead: Pico Blanco backpacking trip with buddy Andy in ten days, on which I will dig my annual supply of aralia root, then family vacation to the Mendocino coast.