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Summer preparations for beauty and health
Summer brings us an abundance of fruits, berries and flowers. These wonderful gifts of nature want to enjoy all year round. And nothing is impossible here. The main thing is to make preparations in advance for beauty and health.
Bouquets from summer
Agree, there is no greater pleasure in winter than to warm a cup of herbal tea in the palms of your hands, fragrant with the aromas of summer. In addition, all these wonderful herbs and flowers can be used for cosmetic masks, creams and hair decoctions. Therefore, it will be useful to master the art of harvesting herbs.
Collect them in dry, clear weather, when the dew has completely disappeared. The most important rule is not to rip everything clean. After all, plants need strength to recover. Carefully cut off with a knife or scissors only the fully opened leaves, only slightly grabbing the petioles. If you need plant flowers, collect them during the flowering period, when the buds have bloomed in all their glory. Only in this way, the blanks from flowers for the winter will retain the maximum of useful properties. And don’t forget to leave a few flowers with seeds for future seasons.
When all the herbs are collected, they will have to be properly dried. This should be done in a well-ventilated, darkened room. The blanks should dry out properly, but in no case should they rot and even more so not burn out in the sun. For plants with essential oils, such as thyme or oregano, 30-35 °C is sufficient. Herbs without oils can be dried in the oven or dryer at a temperature of 50-60 °C. The blanks themselves are stored in linen or paper bags separately. Aromatic herbs can be placed in glass or ceramic jars with sealed lids. Be sure to attach labels with the name and date of collection. Summer herbal collections are stored for no longer than two years.
Home First Aid kit
Harvesting herbs for the winter is a storehouse of vitamins and medicines for all occasions. Thyme perfectly warms in the cold, improves thought processes and has a beneficial effect on blood vessels. A tart infusion of St. John’s wort will help to cope with rheumatism and melancholy, and at the same time heal a sick liver. Oregano essential oils are useful for colds: they soothe sore throats and relieve coughs. A cup of tea with melissa will soothe the disturbed nerves and give you a strong, serene sleep. Do you suffer from frequent headaches and jumping blood pressure? Prepare a decoction of dried mint leaves or add it to regular tea. And mint improves digestion and brings the body into tone. Harvesting and drying chamomile flowers will provide you with medicinal raw materials for a variety of diseases. A decoction of it is effective for stomach cramps, ulcers and gastritis, kidney stones, hypertension, flu, and gum inflammation. Feel free to add it to any home-made cosmetics.
In addition to simple collections, you can make preparations of herbs for tea. At the same time, they should be dominated by only one component with a pronounced aroma. Therefore, it makes sense to divide mint, lemon balm, thyme or oregano into different collections. In autumn and winter, a restorative collection of blackberry leaves, strawberries, black currants, thyme and St. John’s wort will definitely come in handy. For colds and flu, brew a medicinal tea for the household from chamomile, mint, linden flowers and elderberry berries. And for those who are on a diet, vitamin tea made from peppermint, buckthorn bark, parsley roots and dandelion will help.
Sweet harvest
Preparations of fruits and berries — a wonderful treat for the whole family. You can make homemade dried apricots from apricots. To begin with, we stand apricots without seeds for 3-4 hours in the shade and in a draft. Then we transfer them to a wooden tray and expose them to the sun for 5-6 days, turning them over periodically. From 1 kg of apricots, about 200 g of dried apricots are obtained.
To please your loved ones with delicious prunes, we will dry the fresh fruits in the oven. The recipe for harvesting fruit in this case prescribes to blanch the pitted plum for 30 seconds in a weak solution of soda (10 g of soda per 1 liter of water) and rinse it under warm water. We spread the halves of the fruit on a baking sheet and put them in a preheated 50 °C oven. Mix the fruit every 4 hours. At the same time, each time we increase the temperature by 10 °C, until it reaches 90 °C. To make the prunes acquire a characteristic shine, at the very end, increase the temperature to 120 °C for 10 minutes.
Preparations of berries retain their valuable properties for months. Especially happy that you can dry any berries. Strawberries, raspberries and blackberries should not be washed, otherwise they will go limp. And the fruits should be chosen slightly unripe. The following method will help to preserve their delicate aroma and beautiful appearance. We lay out the berries on a sheet of thick paper and place it on a pack of newspapers. Every 3-4 hours, we remove the wet newspapers and put the dry ones. Repeat this manipulation every 3-4 hours for 4-5 days and do not forget to turn the berries. A rich harvest of summer fruits in the middle of winter is provided, if, of course, the household does not encroach on it.
Have you already started harvesting fruits, berries and herbs for the winter? What interesting recipes are there in your collection? We look forward to branded recipes for health and beauty.