Dear Subscribers,

This is a sort of catch up, follow up, and reminder email.

First of all, you probably know that the Senate adjourned without voting on the egregious food safety bill. This is cause for interim celebration but since the candidates' pockets are padded by the same lobbyists, you can be sure that regardless of the outcome of the next election, the issue will arise again so action will be required again and again. My mother had a few voting rules for elections: never vote for an incumbent was one of them, but right now we owe a few members of Congress a pat on the back, not many, but a couple at least.

Postal Shipments

On an entirely different topic, my several prior mentions of how postal shipments are handled fell almost completely on dead ears. Following 9/11, the postal service began installing irradiation equipment at major hubs, starting, if my sources are accurate, with New York and Washington, DC, but when at a local post office, I happened to have overheard discussion of facilities in Seattle. There is no guarantee that using the post assures irradiation of shipments but it could very well happen. In my opinion, probably hotly refuted by the people to train employees to deny risk, there would be irreparable changes to the ingredients in supplements, all, of course, for the worse. If you microwave your food, maybe the degradation is of no concern to you, but you have a choice in shipping methods. FedEx has its own fleet of planes as does UPS, but what FedEx tells me and I have shot this as far up the ladder as I can, is that only shipments going on passenger flights are subjected to irradiation. This means that shipments handled by FedEx have no reason to be irradiated since the express shipments are transported on cargo planes and the ground shipments go by truck. FedEx assures me that they do not own the equipment to irradiate and they don't lease equipment from anyone else.

For those who are not aware of the consolidation that is occurring, FedEx now delivers the postal service's express shipments, at least this is true in foreign countries. Moreover, they recently introduced a domestic service that is jointly handled by FedEx and the postal service. This service involves FedEx pick up on the sender's end and postal delivery on the recipient end. The advantage of it is that FedEx transport is used to the local post office. From that point, the shipment is handled the same as mail but because of the routing, there is no irradiation. The disadvantage is that priority mail is 2-3 days from one coast to the other but FedEx is a week, five business days. The new joint service would not have much effect at all on delivery times where the distance is shorter, but it would mean much slower delivery when the distance is greater.

For the record, we are shipping from a tiny town called Poulsbo and mail would go via Seattle but FedEx does not necessarily route via Seattle. If I track packages, I can see that some go straight to Portland, Oregon, or countless other places. Out of my whole subscriber list, exactly one person said he would be interested in this new service. The rates are the same as the postal rates, but the tracking is complicated because FedEx tracking ends at the local post office. A second person wrote to ship so as to avoid irradiation. Yes, I would like to aim at avoiding it on 100% of shipments of everything that is ingested. Obviously, I am somewhat less concerned about books but it would not surprise me if there is some kind of subtle damage to paper or lingering issues such as with returning soldiers and depleted uranium. Who is going to pay for that study?

Once in a while, I unilaterally decide to change the shipping method but nearly as quickly as I do this, someone howls that he or she needed it faster. From my end, I prefer FedEx on nearly all counts, including damage insurance. I am not wasting your time with this repetition for no reason at all. This information is relevant to everyone who buys anything from anyone that is transported. Some countries are offering strips to attach to outside of the box. These would indicate to the recipient whether or not the contents were exposed to radiation. I think it's a brilliant idea, but when your life depends on your supplements, the idea goes a bit beyond brilliant.

The Mind, Mushrooms (no, not that kind), and Eating

So, while on the topic of how the mind works, I have little intermission features. This man is absolutely endearing:

http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html

The presentation triggered a couple of recollections to emerge from my memory bank. When visiting my soul group —. I told you about this before — only two of the members of the group claimed to have had human incarnations, both on Earth. Then, a dolphin chimed in and said, "Being a human is not all it's cracked up to be." I believed him but the work with the animal communicator has been giving this a bigger and bigger context. I mentioned that Savika feels she is working hard on teaching me to honor telepathic messages, some of them initiated by her (as tests) and some by Tundra (which is obviously very touching) and some by my own soul or others. The point is that she is completely aware of my learning disabilities and is trying to help me. When I asked for her help identifying plants that were toxic so that I wouldn't have another Round Up encounter (blowing from my neighbor's yard), she moaned about her chore list. However, on the way back to the front door after a little walk, she put her nose down and then jumped back. I should have rushed for the camera right then and there because there were some odd looking mushrooms growing under the rhododendrons. The next day, they looked like something that washed up on shore after BP's environmental mismanagement. Every day, they looked increasingly slimy and horrible, but the day she lurched, they might have looked edible to someone, not me since I won't touch any mushrooms and don't think anyone else should either.

If you missed that round of emails, they are archived (three parts):

http://ingridnaiman.com/subscription_posts/mold_emails/mushrooms_1.html

Now, to eating! Yesterday, Dan, my garden helper, was here. We harvested the burdock that was planted in straw.

Dan has a lovely sense of humor but he gave me the impression that he had no intention of eating burdock. Later in the day, I asked if he was serious because usually he wants to try everything. To make it easier for him to say "yes", I said I thought I might try a Polish or Russian cutlet or potato pancake. He is of Polish descent so I thought this might nudge a bit. I took the biggest of the roots (and they were, for the record, very easy to harvest when extracted from the straw).

I improvised because I couldn't actually find a link to a good recipe (half the links were to my own pages!) Anyway, I put a bit of water and a raw egg in the VitaMix machine. Then, I added some Himalayan pink salt and hard red wheat bread flour from the farmer's market. The consistency started to look promising. I decided to use sesame oil, sort of thinking Zen despite trying to be Northern European, and fried these in black sesame seeds and black cumin. Savika was paying a lot of attention so I made two for her and then added garlic in the batch Dan and I would eat. He thought the garlic was a bit mild and that they did not really taste like potato pancakes. I told him I'd try sour cream and apple sauce next time.

http://ingridnaiman.com/subscription_posts/herbs/burdock.html

So, why am I taking up your time and energy to talk about recipes! The reason is that going back 800 years, I found that burdock was the single most common denominator in cancer formulas. Dan's mother has a farm and thinks burdock is a weed so I had a little propaganda mission, but Hildegard of Bingen had it in her duckweed elixir and it's in just about everything today also, including the Essiac tea (which I sell as Ojibwa Tea), and the various elixirs. The Japanese have identified something they call the B-factor that is anticancer and the Hungarians have found a desmutagen. Burdock does not have an overwhelming flavor and the texture was practically unnoticeable after whirling around in the blender. To make it a hit, some condiments might be necessary. I used what I had on hand: cilantro chutney (very spicy) and mango chutney (a little sweeter).

I also served Dan some of my wormwood wine! You can see how that turned out:

http://ingridnaiman.com/subscription_posts/parasites/wormwood.html

Now, to dot all the i's, garlic is supposed to be dangerous for dogs. That is why Savika had to be served first. Try to understand that she is very involved in the projects here so excluding her was out of the question.

Burdock takes space. When a few of you ordered several packets of seeds, I thought you must be heading for commercial use or at least the farmer's market, but it was totally clear that one plant is basically a small meal, like appetizers for two adults and one Akita.

As for the wine, as expected, it's bitter. Next year, I might extract the wormwood in blackberry wine.

This train is definitely going through many stations. Black cumin is a very popular product. I use it in cooking and in the Potent Protection immune formula. For me, it is definitely "middle" as in Middle Eastern, not Asian. It more colorful than fennel (though not as versatile) but it doesn't have the bite of ginger or pepper. On yet another note, earlier today, I added two more black cumin hair products:

http://www.sacred-medicine.org/black_cumin/blackcumin_hair.php

Clove Bud Oil

To wrap this up, the other experiment Dan and I made yesterday was with the new "industrial" clove bud oil. It's completely natural but I don't consider it to be therapeutic grade so it will be labeled accordingly. It is from the same source as the oil we used on the roof moss. That experiment was a success. Last weekend, Dan proposed that a friend use clove bud oil instead of Round Up on her bermuda grass. There are mushrooms popping up everywhere in my yard. I should have connected the dots. I have not been sleeping well. After spraying the mushrooms with clove oil, I slept like a log last night. I was actually deeply exhausted from sleep deprivation so this was a gift. The oil is in; the bottles are in; but we are still having trouble with labels. I am hoping for good news today.

Many blessings,

Ingrid
http://www.sacred-medicine.org/

Yesterday	Today
Postscript: Based on a little web sleuthing, this would appear to be Amanita muscaria, a poisonous mushroom that is also a potent hallucinogen; but don't trust me because I am not on a first name basis with any mushroom. Perhaps, however, I should look around for a stoned critter because a few pieces are missing. See: http://morelmushroomhunting.com/findz307.jpg and http://www.secondattention.org/articles/psy_christmas.asp

Copyright by Ingrid Naiman 2010

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