zinc

I know how annoying acne can be. In fact, it can be downright depressing. Really bad acne can make you want to stay home all day and make you feel like everyone is looking at your skin. Recently, I have been dealing with terrible breakouts, which is uncommon for me. While I've always had acne, it has recently gotten a lot worse. I have a sneaking suspicion as to why: I tried to cure it topically and it wound up backfiring in my face (literally).

This slightly sweet, buttery nut is one of my favorites. I love popping a bunch of raw cashews in the oven and then lightly toasting them for an afternoon snack. I also like to sprinkle them on cereal or anything that needs a crunch. 

Milk. It was the beverage of choice growing up as a child in our house. Never skim, sometimes raw, and with any meal of the day. In fact, cow milk is the beverage of choice in most American households.

Wild rice is not actually rice at all, but the seed from a grass of semi-aquatic species found from southern Canada to the eastern United States along the Atlantic coastal marshes. It was the staple food for the Ojibwa and Chippewa people who gathered it by canoe and fire parched the seeds.

You likely learned about zinc – a type of metal – in chemistry class when you memorized the periodic table. Or maybe you have slathered on some thick, white sunscreen with zinc oxide in it? (Zinka sunscreen was all the rage in my middle school!) Perhaps you reach for a zinc supplement when you feel a cold or flu coming on?

Today’s walk through Mother Earth’s Medicine Cabinet will lead us down a path to check out Pine Pollen. All pine trees produce this magnificent pollen that can be harvested or purchased at a health food store. The pollen is not actually pollen -- it is technically considered to be a form of seed. It isn’t packed with flavor but it has a light nutty taste.

Minerals are an essential part of our diet. Did you know that minerals cannot be made by the body? That’s right, they have to be ingested. Today’s walk through Mother Earth’s Medicine Cabinet will take us down the long road of minerals we need, and what foods we can get them from.

Trace minerals, also known as trace elements or micro-minerals, are minerals we only require in very low doses, whereas our body requires more of the major minerals. Minerals basically serve three functions for our body.

The walnut tree is found from the Balkans to China. It is a slow-growing tree, and its fruit has been eaten by Europeans for more than 8,000 years. The ancient Greeks began cultivating the trees and the practice spread throughout Europe. The walnut tree came to North America with the English settlers in the early 19th century –  and thus the walnut got its name the English walnut. Today the largest groves of walnut trees are found in Kyrgyzstan at high elevations.

The production of molasses was developed in India in approximately 500 B.C.E.  Arab invaders brought the product to Spain, and a century later it came to the West Indies with Christopher Columbus. The British began cultivating sugar cane in Barbados in 1646, and by the end of the century molasses was a commodity. It is not clear when blackstrap molasses was first used for human consumption.

Ginseng was discovered more than 5000 years ago in the mountains of Manchuria, China. The name is derived from the Chinese word “jen” meaning the form of man and “shen” defined as the crystallization of the essence of the earth.  However, this ancient herb was used approximately the same time in North America by many of the tribes there, though the European invaders did not know of its existence until the 16^th century.