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Page 38
| or coffee grinder. To fill your own capsules, which allows you to control the quality and proportion of ingredients, buy an inexpensive grinder and use it just for herbs. (Use a separate grinder for coffee.) Wear a pollen mask to avoid breathing herb dust and wipe the grinder clean after each use. Some herbs, such as cloves, contain essential oils that dissolve plastic parts if their residue is left in the grinder. Vegetarian capsules are available through health food stores and herb shops; regular gelatin capsules, which are less expensive, are made from animal parts. Note that certain aromatic spices (cloves again, and there may be others) cause vegetable gelatin caps to shatter after a day or two of storage, though they work perfectly well for all herbs and most spices. |
| Tinctures |
| To make a tincture, which is a concentrated medicinal extract, place a handful of fresh or dried herbs in a quart jar and cover them with 80-proof (or higher proof) vodka, rum, whisky or brandy until the alcohol covers the herbs by at least two inches. Alternatively, use vegetable glycerine instead of alcohol, or combine the two. Vegetable glycerine is a sweet thick fluid that extracts most but not all of the plant constituents dissolved by alcohol and is a popular ingredient in children's tinctures. Cider vinegar can be used to make tinctures, too, but it dissolves fewer plant compounds and has a shorter shelf life. Cider |
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