Welcome to Powder Power.
Powder Power! Handy herbal powders for harried humans.
Are you a harried human?
Is life a little bit too much for you sometimes?
Got too many projects, too many children, too many whatever?
Welcome to Powder Power.
So we will begin with Peace Powder.
So one part of rose petals in powdered form.
Roses smell fantastic
and have a nice nervine restorative effect on our bodies.
So 125 grams of rose,
which is one part of this formula.
And you can of course also measure parts
via teaspoonfuls or tablespoonfuls
if you prefer to measure via spoon or cup.
Okay, that might take up quite a bit of that.
It's like a little bit too much.
Okay, you know what?
I'm not going to measure.
I'm just going to eyeball it.
Let's take all that back.
Here we go.
This is what happens at the end of the day.
I'm a big fan of smelling everything as I go along.
Now we're going to add a bit of
ashwagandha root to our formula
about one part to ashwagandha.
So we eyeballed it.
This is about one part rose.
So about one part ashwagandha is going to go about inch,
just slightly under an inch up from there.
Withania somnifera. And adaptogenic plants helping us
rebound resiliently, responding with grace to the slings
and arrows of our existence.
The inevitable beauty and challenge that comes along
with living a very full and hopefully fulfilling life.
And then adding our maca powder.
The maca tastes delicious.
It's got the sweet,
nutty, earthy, grounding flavor. Lepidium meyenii.
And is very nourishing and grounding
and supportive and nutritive, and will help to center
and uplift the other ingredients in the formula.
And I actually want to put in a little bit more of the maca
in proportion to the other herbs that I've put in so far.
And now we'll add a little something something
to activate the formula a little bit
with ginger root powder.
So we don't want to bud in too much ginger
because it's really strong,
it's acrid or spicy or pungent.
And it can be a little bit too moving.
A big spoonful of ginger.
And then some cinnamon.
We can do quite a bit more cinnamon
than we did with the ginger.
Cinnamon is warming and in conjunction with ginger,
just helps to move the formula a little bit.
So this formula Peace... what what I'm calling Peace Powder
has nervine, adaptogens, circulatory stimulants
with ginger and cinnamon and put all together,
this is something which can help to soothe frayed nerves
while maintaining a little bit of flow within the body
and not getting stagnant with too much of a soothing affect.
So, so far, this is our formula.
You all are looking good, let's mix you up.
Okay, everybody looks about equally distributed
and we've got our first powder: Peace Powder.
So other plants that you can put in
that are really lovely might include tulsi.
Maybe you put in a little bit of goji
or other berries in powdered form.
Placing one label on the top and one label on the side
so that regardless of orientation of your jars,
you'll be able to know what is inside.
And on my label, I have the number of parts for each plant
so that regardless of how it is that I'm measuring
either by weight spoonful or cupful,
it's easy for me to measure as well as the date of creation.
And my title for my mixture.
So first powder for today, Peace Powder.
So now we're coming into turmeric land, this golden,
beautiful Curcuma longa plant.
And with turmeric we can make a whole variety of recipes.
Turmeric has a little bit of spicy flavor like ginger.
And similar to ginger is also moving circulatory stimulant
and dare I say, anti-inflammatory in action.
So creating Happy Joints Powder, or what I learned
at the Colorado School of Clinical Herbalism
as Arabic Honey, we can combine together turmeric
and black pepper and ginger. Roughly six parts turmeric,
one part black pepper, and one part ginger
into a powder and add honey to that
and imbibe about one spoonful a day.
But instead today we'll be making Golden Milk Powder.
And with Golden Milk Powder,
this creates similar to the Happy Joints Powder
something which is helpful if you're experiencing chronic,
every time you move your wrist, it crunches.
Every time you move your arm, it crunches
or you feel a little bit of tightness
and strain all over your body or get injured quite easily.
This is something helpful to take consistently.
Golden Milk Powder here,
there's a variety of different ways to make
your Golden Milk Powder.
But for today, we'll add about six spoonfuls
of turmeric powder into our 500 milliliter jar.
Three...
Turmeric is this beautiful yellow color
that will happily dye your hands,
dye your clothing, dye your table.
So take care when you're working with your turmeric powder.
And next, we'll add in a bit of ginger,
about a spoon of ginger powder,
Zingiber officinale in its own family.
The ginger family, zingiberaceae.
So one spoonful.
And about two spoons of cinnamon.
Cinnamon has this lovely aroma, warming,
slightly stimulating, smells amazing.
So two spoonfuls.
And a little bit of black pepper, just a pinch.
If you add in too much black pepper,
then it can overpower the recipe
and be a little bit painful on your digestive system.
So putting in just about a third of a spoon here
of black pepper, which helps to activate the turmeric
in the formula along with your fat of choice.
And just a little bit of cardamom and nutmeg.
The cardamom can easily overpower the recipe as well.
So just a little bit, even less than the black pepper
that I put in.
And nutmeg, just a tiny bit as well.
A little bit more than the cardamon.
So we're making less than I had originally anticipated
but let's shake it up and see how it is.
So Golden Milk Powder.
So the best way to figure out if your recipe
is the proportions that you like is organoleptic testing.
So by smelling it, it smells like it's roughly
what I'm hoping for.
And then by tasting it, you can help to assess
if this is the formula that you are going for.
You can of course measure things very specifically
or you can do things the folk method as we are doing here
and kind of sort of measuring as we're putting things in.
And then adjusting it as you go along.
With Golden Milk Powder.
When you are preparing it, you can heat up your hot water
or milk of choice.
I like to use a variety of different nut milks.
And then place in about a teaspoon full, mix it around
and then add in a dollop of coconut fat.
And you have something really lovely,
particularly for cold, wet days.
Beautiful color, smells wonderful, tastes wonderful.
And you can adjust this recipe
with a little bit more of this, a little bit more of that,
maybe adding in some nervine like tulsi or rose.
Which leads us to our next formula.
And then one more powder from today.
We will make cacao turmeric rose Chai Powder.
With making chai,
there's quite a few different ways to make chai.
Your basic chai recipe includes ginger, cinnamon,
cardamon and clove.
And in today's recipe we'll have all of those
including quite a few friends.
So let's start us off with some rose petal powder.
About two parts of rose petal powder
and two parts of cacao out of this formula here
and some cacao powder.
I feel like cacao
and chocolate makes everything taste fabulous
and it also has this nice grounding effect
that I love combining with rose to address the heart.
In Chinese medicine, the flavor that is associated
with the heart, which is associated
with that of the fire element, is the bitter flavor
which cacao on its own with zero additives is quite bitter.
And now for some turmeric,
I'm bringing in a little bit of that turmeric flavor
so that the king herbs in this formula
here are primary herbal friends
that we're working with are the rose, cacao
and turmeric, in forming the base of our formula.
And then the chai, the decoration
but also a big partner in this dance
that we're creating together here
which creates a nice calming, restorative,
grounding and delicious formula.
Cinnamon, about a part, one part of cinnamon.
So a little bit smaller of a layer than we've got so far.
And ginger, I'm going to use a spoon for ginger
to help make sure that I don't go overboard.
So let's do two spoonfuls,
actually a spoonful and a half of ginger and licorice.
Just a little bit of licorice for flavor.
Great harmonizer helps to pull together disparate elements
of a formula.
So just a tiny bit of ginger, of licorice,
say about half a spoon
and about half a spoon of cardamom powder.
So here we've got our traditional Thai friends
with ginger and cardamom, clove, you can add in.
Or here we'll move along with some black pepper.
And again, many repeating herbs
that we've been using so far includes ginger,
black pepper, turmeric, the three herbs
in our Happy Joints formula
or the Arabic Honey electuary that we could make.
And then finally, just a little bit of nutmeg
for a little bit of flavor
and a little bit of that calming effect and warming effect.
So together we've got our cacao, turmeric, rose, chai here.
Let's mix it up all together.
Smells pretty delicious.
Okay, so we can take, do a taste test of this one.
I'll go ahead and label it, cacao, turmeric, rose, chai,
a label on the top and a label on the sides
with the details of the formula.
Okay, so let's do half a teaspoon
of cacao, turmeric, rose chai, take a taste test,
see how the herbs alchemized together in this formula.
Before we decide whether to add anybody else in,
add some hot water.
And if you would like to make this with a black tea
of your choice to have a little bit of that caffeinated
traditional chai bevy, you can do that as well.
Or just hot water if you want it to be uncaffeinated
and a little bit of our coconut fat.
Okay and then a little bit of honey.
Actually I'll do it without honey
just to taste test it on its own first.
Look at the color differentials.
That's good.
All right, so we've got cacao, turmeric, rose, chai.
This is our Golden Milk.
Cap it up.
And we have three different powder powers
to work with for a variety of preparations.