Home Herbal: Cook, Brew and Blend Your Own Herbs

by Susannah Steel

Recommending herbs for both well-being and minor ailments, Home The Ultimate Guide to Cooking, Brewing, and Blending Your Own Herbs offers a wealth of practical advice on the medicinal, cleaning, and consumptive uses of herbs. Featuring an A-Z directory of 100 key herbs, with information on how to grow, harvest, prepare, and use them, Home The Ultimate Guide to Cooking, Brewing, and Blending Your Own Herbs emphasizes what anyone can achieve in their garden and kitchen.

Genres: Nonfiction, Herbs, Health, Cookbooks, Gardening, Reference

352 pages, Paperback

First published March 7, 2011

Reviews

[Sam (Hissing Potatoes)]

A great introduction to using herbs in a wide variety of recipe types: foods, teas, creams, balms, soaps, and so much more. It's very well organized and includes clear instructions for making tinctures/infusions/decoctions/other herbal formats. It lays out clear, thorough descriptions of many herbs with diagrams, uses, dosages, warnings, sources, and how and why specific herbs work well with others. The book does include some gardening information, but it's almost too short to truly be practical. The real value and meat of the book lies in the sheer breadth of herbal information and recipes for promoting health and well-being at home.

[Ana]

4.5 stars actually. A very comprehensive book with lots of recipes. I just wished it covered more herbs.

[Wendy]

Amazing book with tons of wide-ranging information.

[Tiffany]

Great pictures.

[Céline FrenchAlps]

I found and bought this book in French. It is very interesting because you have the description of common plants : what do they look like, how to use them etc. The book also contains chapters about recipes : recipes for food to eat and recipes to treat your skin, hair, digestion problems, feminine or masculine problems, recipes to create effervescent bowls for the bath too. I would say that the book is very complete, having a chapter at the end explaining how to grow your plants, but I think that the recipes are unfortunately not that easy. For instance, for a recipe named "lavender and salt" you need 5 or 6 items that you don't have at home and not easy to produce yourself (like oils and stuff ) so you need to buy everything before doing your recipe. I was expecting recipes "with the bare necessities" I would say, not recipes very well elaborated.

[Freda Mans-Labianca]

This is a groovy book. I like it for several reasons.
This summer was the first year I actually have my own herb garden. It is small, but I have Wild Celery, Parsley and Basil. But after reading this book, I actually now know what they are good for, and more ways to use it.
I really loved all the different aspects to using a single herb or flower. You know most are used in cooking, but take Wild Celery for example, did you know it's great to eat but also can be made into a decoction, used for rheumatoid arthritis! How cool is that?!
I definitely am going to be talking about this book for a while, and recommending it to all who are interested in herbs.

[Deb]

A fairly complete resource of healing herbs and plants, their properties, what health issues they solve and how to use them with recipes for both food and beauty products. I bought this one because many of the plants are some less common ones--although the usual rosemary, lavender, sage, thyme, etc. are included as well, and I want to play more with my container herb garden this year. I am going to try the lemon balm and honey puree, mint and cucumber side salad with cashew nut cream and raw carrot and almond soup soon. The pictures of each plant are good and the tables with which herbs to use for things like coughs and colds, digestion, women's health, etc. are handy.

[Marci -]

If you are thinking of going a more natural/ holistic route, then this is the book for you. With descriptions of the many favorite herbs, growing, uses, and more than 70 recipes for cordial, tinctures, soaps, creams among other things

There are step by step photographs, and demonstrations to help you along the way.

[Yodamom]

A beautiful book filled with photos of herbs and recipes. With a detailed use for each herb easy to find with simple recipes for various uses.

[Stephanie]

Fantastic book for starting herb gardeners. Offers pictures, how to start, how to grow and uses. The only addition I wish it had was zones for growth, shade or sun based on those zones.

[April]

It looks helpful, but not so much. Mostly it looks like you'd end up buying a bunch of stuff (herbs) to do all this. That's separate from the shampoo recipes all of which start with using shampoo.