Fresholi | Melting Pot Café

Hello everybody,

Have been reading threads here for the last couple of days and figured it was time to introduce myself.

I am a newbie and have been "cooking" only three years. So far I am only doing cream, lotion, shampoo, salve, gel and similar.
I am fortunate to live in a herb garden (owned by others) and am allowed to pick what I need as long as I leave some.  :D   So I make oil-, water- and alcohol extracts which I use in my "cooking".

For the last two years I have done lots and lots of reading (am 70% bed bound) about herbs and their use "in them old days", trying to learn and understand, and have made some experiments (a few very good others not so good).

There is a "cooking" forum in Sweden, with members from Sweden, Norway and Finland in which I participate. Most people there are doing creams, lotions and gels. A few do soaps.

I have a wonderful hubby who spoils me terribly and is very patient, two grown boys, 2 grand children and at the moment a cat (we are "vacation parents to her) that is stretched out halfway over my keyboard and stomach. I blame all misspellings on her. ;)

I am looking forward looking in here now and then.

Eva

Really good to see you here Eva, you'll really like it on this forum.  Of course, I shall do what I always do and say we want pics of your stuff (I have a pic fetish  :mwaha: !).  Living near a herb garden is SO handy, I'm dead jealous!!!

Hello Eva,

I envy you for the herb garden - do you have a photo of it?

If you make more posts then you will gradually get to see more boards and more information.

Hello Eva, nice to meet you. That sounds like heaven, having a herb garden at your disposal. You could be a very helpful person here, a few of us have just started making creams and have many, many questions.
Welcome to the forum  :buttrf:

Thank you guys/girls for the warm welcome.

I will go out tomorrow and take some pictures. We live far north so everything has just started here but it will give you an idea anyhow. this place used to be a school where you learned gardening and housekeeping and such and enthusiasts in the village bought the place and kept it going.

Corrie, just fire away with questions. If I know I will tell and if not... well I gues then I will not tell...  ???

To everybody, there may be cultural misunderstandings with me. I talk before I think sometimes and am no good at explaining so please bear with me.

Don't worry about that Eva.

You'll probably see some very strange words used here which you won't find in a dictionary!

That is very true EJ  :mwaha:

Welcome Eva.  I love that name  :buttrf:  Oh how lovely and I have a wonderful picture in my head of the herb garden.  Please do feel right at home here, it would be lovely to hear more about your 'cooking'  ;) and the wonderful herby concoctions you create  :buttrf:.  I really look forward to chatting with you around the forum  :)

Wellcome Eva. I am sooo jealous that you have a herb garden. I always wanted one, but we keep moving and I never get one going. Your english is excellent.

Don't worry about the cultural differences. I am german and have the same problem as you, but so far no one has bitten my head off or ran for cover, they are all really friendly and helpful here.

You must be having daylight now nearly 24 hours up there ? How does one cope with that and trying to sleep ???

Cheers
Sabine

Good that I don't have to "watch my tongue" and be correct and all that, am not good at it.  :)

madpiano, yes we have daylight 24/7 now and things are growing like madness. I love it.

If I want to post/share a recipe should that be under the "Show & tell" department or is it divided in to creams, shampoos, soaps, etc, somewhere? Is it enough if it has been tested and liked by a handful people or does it have to have some other authorisation before posting?
At the Swedish forum we have all kinds of experiments and share advice on how to improve something or save something that went wrong. That is why I'm asking so I don't end up as an elephant in a china store.  :mwaha:

Have to get some sleep now.

Hello Eva. Wow living in a herb garden it sounds delightful, to be able to experiment with your infusions and 'cooking' sounds wondeful.
Iwould'nt worry about your spelling Im fully english but boy do I  spell some 'howlers'.
Really looking forward to chatting to you on here and sharing in your creative adventures.

One question, how do you manage to sleep when it is daylight 24/7, im waking at 4am at the moment with the dawn and its driving me nuts!!
Welcome

There is a section for Recipes - but you may have to be a Junior member in order to see that section.

Can you see this

http://www.forum.fresholi.co.uk/index.php?topic=418.0 (http://www.forum.fresholi.co.uk/index.php?topic=418.0)

Recipes don't have to be authorised before they're posted on the forum - you can post an experiment to see what others think.

You can email a recipe to Helen if you want it to be posted on the main Fresholi site in Resources (you need to log-in there to see some of them which are for members only).

Hello Eva and welcome. I love herb gardens and would love to see your pictures.

How do you manage to keep regular hours when it is daylight 24/7? When it starts getting lighter here at night I lose track of time and put the kids to bed far too late but we do have fun  ;D

Don't worry about watching your tongue, we are a friendly carefree bunch here :) :buttrf:

Hello Eva nice to meet you  and you are welcome.

ElaineJ, no I can't see that thread but that's ok I can post the recipes later.
I have come up with a moisturising face cream that has been praised on the other forum for actually working on big pores(?), wrinkles and "sloppy" skin (which is me in a nut shell) and you guys may like to try it too. I will have to learn the English words for all the ingredients though.

ShaSha, I haven't had any problems with my hours until I got sick. Now I use a Gö Lite lamp every morning, for about an hour during my wake up process, which makes me very sleepy at midnight. Without it my hours starts rotating with two hours every three days. Summer two years ago  I was out picking birch leaves at 3.30 in the morning and went to bed when hubby woke up. Not good.  :o

Have to get some work done (I do computer games for girls) but first coffee in the garden unless the mosquitoes gets too friendly (have to get that bug juice made).  :)

Eva, I'd love to see your recipes.  Don't worry too much about posting in the wrong place cos the mods can move it (I've done it myself in the past without thinking).  The face cream sounds lovely - by "sloppy" I assume you mean .. ahem... more mature?  :mwaha:  I'm all for having a recipe that fixes that!!! Will I become like a 20 year old again?  :mwaha:

The sleep thing sounds mad.. I had a friend who had some weird sleep cylce illness too but she was retired and not married so could sleep whenever she wanted and it didn't affect anyone. 

I took a stroll in the garden to take some pictures and must say I'm a bit worried.
There is a new owner of the place and I'm worried he may not realize the value of all the old herbs. Some areas have been mowed (!!!) and other areas the weed is taking over (see images). The smaller herb garden is still (it seems) getting attention which is good.
There used to be lots of Echinacea rudbeckia and I made cold medicin from it but they have not started growning this year. Fortunately my mother in law are trying to grow them so I may still be able to make some this fall.
The image where there are lots of yellow Dandelion(?) it used to be Rows and rows of Sage, Parsley, Hysop and Lemon balm. Can't believe they neglect those or even mowed them to death.  This is so sad.
I will have to talk to them to give me a piece of land so I can grow my own. I'm usually feeling better in the summer and fall so I should be able to handle it.
I still have problems believing what I have seen. How can anyone be so stupid to destroy decades of cultivated herbs?/me sobs in the corner

That's a great shame Eva - it must have been a lovely place before.

Yes, it was and still is of course.
If they keep the little herb garden (it is not that small but compared to the larger field it is) going there will be enough for me to pick anyhow beside the Echinacea and St Johns.

I can imagine how that would have looked in the past. It would be a shame for it to disappear  :'( What a resource on your doorstep!

Indeed it is.  It looks just lovely so I would think in its hayday....  :buttrf:  You are incredibly lucky Eva  :)

I forgot to mention....
You will soon get tired of me, just you wait and see.  :mwaha:

On the picture herbs3, to the left and at the back grows a lot of Garden Angelica and Lovage  (I'm not sure of the English names, I get them from Wikipedia). Both used for medicinal purposes. Angelica can be used as local anaesthesia and is also good for the immune system. Ii is said to be effective against bacteria, fungous and virus (I haven't tried that yet). Lovage tea can be used as antiseptic. If one drinks it it stimulates digestion.

It still looks lovely so I can imagine how much better it looked... I'd love to live somewhere with such a view (if I took a pic outside my house, all you'd see is other houses and gardens!).  I've heard of both those herbs, isn't angelica often preserved in sugar and used on cakes too?

That looks so nice Eva, it really is a shame if they let it go to waste.

The last picture looks very swedish. It reminds me of Michel of Lonneberga. All I can see from my window are houses and hoodies (teenagers with hooded sweatshirts)

Cheers
Sabine

 :mwaha: all i see when i look out which i have my back to now is cars.

oh how traumatizing, maybe the new owner has allergies to some of the ::) herbs.

Hi Eva, welcome to the forum!   ;D

 :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: :hi: Hi Eva

Hello & sorry for delayed welcome.

Thank you everybody for the warm welcome!  :)