A Walk on the Wild Side
Second Installment in a Two-Part Series “Wildman” Steve Brill, who had an interest in healthful gourmet cooking, was out for a bike ride when he came across a group of ethnic Greek women dressed in black among the greenery in Cunningham Park, Queens. As he likes to tell it, “I asked them what they were...
Digging Deep: Foraging through History
First Installment in a Two-Part Series “A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.” Ralph Waldo Emerson I was raised in the country and I wanted my children to have the benefit of a clean, natural environment as well—that was one of the major reasons my husband and I decided to...
The Sweet Goodbye of Winter
“A sap-run is the sweet good-by of winter. It is the fruit of the equal marriage of the sun and frost.” John Burroughs, Signs and Seasons, 1886 Two winters ago a friend was passing through New York on her way from Quebec and brought me a big can of maple syrup from the airport’s gift...
The Magic of Beeswax Candles
Continuing our fascination with the by-products of our favorite little friends, honeybees, we are in serious awe of the benefits of burning pure beeswax candles. Most of us are aware of the subtly both sweet and floral, warm scent of beeswax, and also that beeswax’s high melting point allows it to burn slower, drip less,...
Fall is (almost) officially here and we couldn’t be more thrilled. Familiar seasonal scents of cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg will soon fill the air as crisp vibrant leaves crunch underfoot. A truly autumnal ingredient, and one we will be featuring in our specially curated gift sets, is maple syrup. Today, we are exploring maple syrup...
Honey: Nature’s #1 Elixir
While reading up on beeswax for our previous post, we inevitably came across the magical properties of its sibling, honey. Honey has it all. Its antioxidant and anti-bacterial properties make it a powerful booster for energy and the immune system, a facilitator for digestion and for weight loss, a sobering agent, a healing agent, a...
