THE DAILY CUPPA WALKABOUT # 10
Our Histories, Traditions, Memories, and Recipes of Health-Giving Herbs and Plants — Featuring the Aztec’s Medicinal Plants
150-word Walkabout stories published from January 15th to 21st.
Last week I found a touching story about a writer's memories of her grandmother in Africa and the special foods she prepared. It left me thinking a lot about our various histories and memories and the health-giving benefits of our traditional food.
Mostly, I’ve been thinking about how much has been lost through the years — well, centuries. Our featured story addresses the important history of Aztec medicinal herbs and plants.
We, as a world family, are bound together with our heritage and the plants our ancestors evolved with. Do you feel it when you walk barefoot in your garden or the woods?
In this walkabout, we reach around the earth and back in time.
In his story about pre-Columbian medicinal plants, I shiver when reading how the Spanish burned the records of plant use.
Codices containing information about Aztec medicinal plants were considered magical and superstitious, and most of them were burned by Spanish missionaries.
It reminded me of my ancestors in Europe being burned for their plant knowledge.
Your Daily Walkabout Guides
Saturday:
Jane Frost (Jane Grows Garden Rooms) leads us into the world of Australian Bush Tucker with bites — tasty bits about native plants and their uses.
From Australia we learn about the blue tongue plant; so-called, because the berries leave one’s tongue blue.
Sunday:
James Beaufait presents a lush Hawaiian feast of traditions, food growing, delicious herbal treats, and sumptuous recipes as he brings us to the islands.
Traveling about 8,000 Km to Hawaii, we learn about the health-giving benefits of strawberry guavas.
Monday:
Kris Bedenian celebrates Northern hemisphere home cooking as she blends her skills in traditional food preparation techniques with modern healthy adaptations.
Leaving the tropical lands, we head to North America and winter storms, where we get a recipe for energy balls that are needed after shoveling snow.
Tuesday:
JM Heatherly shares his love of herbs and herbal lore as he indexes herbs and their uses to lead the younger generation into the magical world of plants.
Those of us who are snowed in may be busy baking bread and topping homemade buns with poppyseeds — JM’s spice of the week. But, he’s not making buns.
Wednesday:
Nancy Blackman brings the ancient wisdom of Traditional Chinese Medicine with a warm Korean flair for using herbs and spices in the home kitchen.
With our buns, we stop in Korea to enjoy a healthy chi tea incorporating many health-giving herbs and spices.
Thursday:
Julie Gaeta combines her expertise as a Health Coach and traditional Mexican cuisine chef with a healthy twist to share recipes for smoothies, teas, and much more.
After our tea, we head to Mexico to learn a basic refried bean recipe. Our traditions and memories are important, as is sharing and looking at the past.
Friday Surprise:
CARMEN F MICSA’s our Friday star! I selected this story because it’s an easy kid-centric way to pack a ton of plant nutrients into juices children would love.
Our Fellow Travelers
KL Simmons offers a nutritious beard option — yummy.
Juana Flor, our favorite vegan gal, shares her tip for adding zest to chili — any chili recipe.
Memories
Jennifer Dunne is after my heart. I love cabbage dishes. This is one I’m trying — Hungarian cabbage rolls!
While we’re staying with my dad, he asked me to make some of my mom’s traditional Hungarian recipes. So today I made Kapusta, or cabbage rolls, from her grandmother’s recipe.
Home baking
Sugar and wheat are things that make some of us ill. But for others, they can be enjoyed. Homemade is better nutritionally than pre-made packaged baked goods, so we celebrate home baking.
Kris Bedenian
Jennifer Dunne
Our Featured Long Form Story
This week's featured long-form article is rich with history and traditional uses of plants. There’s so much here that I know I’ll be referring back to this masterpiece. Thank you, Juan, for sharing the wealth of knowledge.
Inventories of medicinal plants were recorded by Aztecs in “codices” (or codex, plural in Latin). Handwritten pictorial documents that were made by Mesoamerican cultures before the arrival of European colonizers.
By Juan Anomalocaris
In Summary
Think about where your ancestors are from and what you know of their traditions and histories. Do you have memories of special foods and their health-giving benefits?
Do you have stories of family members using herbs and plants to keep healthy or heal illnesses? It’s important we find these stories lost through the years — or centuries. Juan is doing important work to bring back the history of Aztec medicinal herbs and plants.
Thank you for stopping by and reading our stories.
Join The Adventure
We’d love to have you join us. Do you have stories from your family or cultural traditions? Do you grow food or forage? Do you have a special vegetable you like to grow?
My bias is that home cooking is better for our health than eating packaged food, so whatever food system you follow, we rejoice in stories about what you’re cooking.
What inspires you to grow your food, forage, and cook?
Come along with us on our walkabout.
Submit your recipes, herb, gardening, and plant lore for our gathering of all stories tagged ‘walkabout.’ Link your long-form stories tagged ‘walkabout’ for our collection.
Disclaimer covering all our Walkabout stories
The information presented in the articles in our Walkabout series is for entertainment and educational purposes only. Each writer writes from their own experience and/or research, as such, their content is shared in good faith for informational use only.
Nutrient-dense whole food from plants — from grapefruit, asparagus, spinach, turmeric to blueberries — can be a problem if you’re eating processed foods and taking prescription medications. It may take your body a while to get used to any diet changes. Always consult with your physician or a qualified health care provider before making any lifestyle or dietary changes.
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Writers put a lot into their stories. If you’re not a Medium member and would like to have access to reading as many stories as you want on a zillion topics, please use one of the above writer’s memberships links to sign up. They get a small percent of your fee at no cost to you. You’ll find the link on a long story on their profile page. I know it takes some of your precious time. I appreciate that.
Past Walkabout Collections
Collection #1
Collection #2
Collection #3
Collection #4
Collection # 5
Collection # 6
