Hats, Boots, & Chocolate

    Call me crazy, but I am in love with cayenne pepper. It's brutal, but when it comes to herbal efficiency, it's fantastic.     How do I know?     Yesterday, whilst cutting vegetables with a mandolin slicer to make a salad, I chopped the tip of my thumb partially off. Now, to be fair, the wound isn't as bad as that makes it sound--the injury is a flap of skin less than half the size of a dime that would threaten to wobble around on the tip of my thumb if it hadn't sealed itself very nicely after a night's sleep.     What does this have to do with cayenne pepper, you may ask?     In traditional, historical herbal knowledge, cayenne is a useful herb to use to stop bleeding--sources I've read and heard about claim that ingesting it or dumping it on a wound can stop the bleeding from a bad cut in ten seconds flat. If you think to question these sources, let me tell you that my experience with this spicy mouth-punisher fits the anecdotes I'...

      Welcome back! Today I'm starting yet another new series, this time about various different herbs, why I love them and think they're cool, and a few different ways they can be used.     Today's spotlight is the stinging nettle, Latin name Urtica dioica.       I know. Since when did anybody  like stinging nettles?     But as careful as I am when considering the nettles growing in my sister's herb garden, when I started doing research into them for story purposes, I couldn't help but fall in love.     So what do nettles do, anyway?     According to Herbs and Old Time Remedies  (lovingly and somewhat mockingly called 'Elia's favorite book' by my sister, because I reference it so often), nettle is a valuable source of food. When used as a pot herb, or steamed and added to a salad, the nettle's stinging hairs get softened by the hot water so they can't sting you anymore, making it much more convenient to acc...