Thursday, July 31, 2014

Holy Basil: My Latest Herbal Love Story




Last year, I fell in love with growing herbs in my home garden.  For those of us who are interested in both the culinary and the medicinal uses of herbs, growing your own supply just makes sense.  Herbs can be very expensive when purchased from a store, especially if you only need to use a small amount at a time.  There is nothing quite like consuming or using fresh herbs that you have grown yourself in your own garden, especially if you grow them organically.  

Last year, my two favorite herbs that I grew in my garden were lemongrass and sweet basil.  I enjoyed many a stir fry dish and drank delicious tea (both hot and cold) made with lemongrass.  I even made an alcohol-based tincture from the lemongrass, which I found to be not too difficult to do once I learned the basics of how to make it.  With the sweet basil, I put it in fresh salads, made basil lemonade, enjoyed it with fresh homegrown tomatoes, added it to dishes, and made some dairy-free pesto sauce with it, which I kept in my freezer and enjoyed during the long cold winter months.  In my opinion, there are fewer tastier things from the garden than fresh sweet basil! 

This year, I am growing both sweet basil and lemongrass again, but I also decided to add holy basil (otherwise known as “tulsi”) to the herbs growing in my herb spiral as well.  My interest in tulsi began with trips to the health food store, where I would often notice Tulsi Tea for sale on the shelves.  Curious about it, I did a little bit of research and learned that it is classified as a tonic and an adaptogenic herb. 

If you are unfamiliar with adaptogenic herbs, they are essentially a class of herbs that help to bring about overall balance to the body and to restore vitality.  Both David Wolfe, the world class expert on super foods and super herbs, and Rosemary Gladstar, a well known herbalist, highly recommend this super herb.  Holy basil grows wild throughout India, and has been used in Ayurvedic medicine for more than 3,000 years.  It is claimed that holy basil helps our bodies to deal with stress and inflammation, among a plethora of other conditions.

Always the experimenter, I decided to grow holy basil and discover its benefits for myself.  Never having tried it in any form before, the first thing that I noticed was the taste.  Unlike any other basil that I had tried before, it has a very unique flavor, but it tastes delicious.  Like other basils, it smells wonderful.   So far, I have made the fresh leaves into a tea twice.  While I can’t say that tusli has changed my world already, I can say that it has given me a feeling of relaxation upon drinking the tea.   I suppose that if I were to consume some on a daily basis, I would likely notice additional benefits.   

I plan to make this wonderful herb into a homemade tincture before the season ends, and I hope to post instructions about how I made it.

Making tea from fresh or dried herbs that you grow yourself is easy.  Our industrialized consumer culture tells us that we must get everything that we need from a store, and that it must reside in a package, box, or plastic wrap to be valid or “safe.”  I grew up consuming tea that comes in teabags.  While I still do buy tea in teabags from time to time, I am increasingly using tea in bulk that I purchase from my local health food store, such as when I buy bulk organically grown black tea to make homemade kombucha, or when I make tea from herbs that I grow myself.  You not only save money this way, you reduce waste, and you reduce the opportunities for companies to add crazy things like weird flavorings to your tea. 



I made my tea with fresh holy basil using the metal tea infuser with the handle (left), but you could also use other types of infusers or reusable teabags to make your own herbal tea.  You could also use some sort of strainer to get all of the herb out after making your tea.  The reusable teabags might be best suited for making tea with dried herbs, but I recommend experimenting and discovering which method you like best.  The mason jar in the picture shows that you can just use whatever you have on hand to make your tea- you don’t even need a mug (be careful of the hot glass though :) )!

This post is shared at Healthy, Happy, Green & Natural Party Hop

12 comments:

  1. awesome article. I've never heard of tulsi or holy basil before. I'm interested in knowing when you blog about the tincture process as I'm just learning about them but would like to get some stored up for winter. Where did you get your seeds or plants for the tulsi?

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    1. Hi Natural Jersey Girl! The seeds were from High Mowing Organic Seeds. I purchased the seed packet at one of my favorite local garden centers. If you can't find a source of the seeds around where you live, here is a link to their site: http://www.highmowingseeds.com/organic-non-gmo-seeds-sacred-basil.html. Botanical Interests also sells the seeds, and their link is: https://botanicalinterests.com/products/view/6132/Basil-Holy-Tulsi-Organic-HEIRLOOM-Seeds/srch:basil

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    2. Does anyone use holy basil in their 1f Kombucha?

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    3. Does anyone use holy basil in their 1f Kombucha?

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    4. Hi Terry,

      I personally have not tried adding holy basil to kombucha, but I have heard of people adding different herbs and flavorings, such as holy basil, after the fermentation process is complete. I would try adding a little fresh tulsi (you could also try dried but go very easy on it, as a little will probably go a very long way) to the kombucha after the primary fermentation process is done and after it has been bottled. I would then let it sit for a few days at room temperature and then taste it to see how you like it (be sure to keep checking daily for pressure building up in the bottles). This would indeed be a way to add some more herbal medicinal properties to your kombucha brew! You might also consider experimenting by adding other adaptogenic herbs to your completed kombucha such as maca, gynostemma, chaga, reishi, or ginseng. Whatever you do, make it tasty and fun while getting healthier every day!

      You might also try combining your brewed kombucha after fermentation with a little bit of holy basil tea and see how you like it.

      To your health!

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  2. Hi Rebecca,
    I love following your natural, herbal journey through your blog posts. I too began to notice Tulsi tea being mentioned and recommended so I am curious about it's benefits and hope to learn more about it. I look forward to trying it and I anticipate your tincture post as well. Thank you so much for sharing this healthy and delicious herb with us at the Healthy, Happy, Green and Natural Party Blog Hop. I'm pinning and sharing.

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    1. Hi Deborah! I'm very much looking forward to making a tincture with Tulsi and one with lemongrass that I am also growing very soon, so I'm hoping to make a video in the near future on that process. Making alcohol tinctures is fairly easy once you know how to make them. People have been making herbal medicines for many of the years of our human history, so it is really exciting for me to rediscover these processes used by our ancestors, as well as those still being utilized in many places around the world today. I think that Tulsi really does taste great as a tea made from the fresh leaves. Have not yet tried it dried, however.

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  3. Very nice post!!! Thanks for sharing such a nice information about Tulsi. I am always crazy about natural things and I am always trying to take medicines which is made up from ayurveda. Recently I have visited a blog which describes some more benefits about Tulsi. You can visit :- http://www.authorsventure.com/health-fitness/10-benefits-holy-basil-tulsi/

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    1. Thanks for the link to additional information on Tulsi, Jennifer. I am always amazed at the power of many plants to heal and Tulsi is certainly no exception. Plants such as Tulsi help our bodies to balance from the inside out, which is something that pharmaceutical drugs fall short on in helping us to become holistically well. I believe that more and more people are returning to herbal medicines to treat many different ailments because we recognize the need to regain body balance, and not just to treat our symptoms. I'm looking forward to making the Tulsi tincture, as well as making another with lemongrass, which I am growing again this year. Cheers!

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  4. Delicious herbal tea works wonders when you need to ease the stress

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