Chickweed Salve
Used to soothe itching caused by insect bites, rashes on unbroken skin, and other minor skin irritations....quite good for hangnails too.
2 parts chickweed
2 parts plantain
1 part comfrey leaves
Olive oil
Grated beeswax
Looks simple, but it needs attention to make it properly. That said, it's one of those sort of recipes that just gets done bit by bit through the day, so no bother really.
Gather a good handful of each of those herbs (doesn't seem to matter which plantain, ribwort or otherwise), wash them in clean water and then lay them out to dry off and wilt.
Tear them up pretty small and 'guess-timate' the quantities. I generally go by the tight handful for this one.
The chickweed will wither down to not a lot so you need to pick a lot more of it than you do the plantain, kind of thing.....not that it's hard to get enough chickweed when it's infesting a flower bed
Anyway, once it's torn up you need to extract the 'goodness' in warm oil.
So, put enough olive oil into a pot that will just cover the wilted herbs....I find it's generally a fair bit less than a cupful.
In the past folks put it outside in the sunshine, it works in a jar just fine, but right now there's a dearth of sunshine in my sodden wet bit of the world, so the pot is put onto the heat as low as I can manage and it's left to gently stew for a couple of hours.
Leave it overnight, then strain.....I buy gents hankies in the sales and use them for this sort of thing, but a few layers of kitchen towels will work, just kind of messy, because it needs to be squeezed. You can line a sieve and press down on the herbs with a spoon to get as much out as possible.
This is known as an infused oil and it's a basic thing used to make many, many recipes.
Beeswax is a hard wax and it takes a lot of heat to melt, so sunshine won't do. Grate it up or scrape or slice it down with a knife, because it'll melt more easily that way. The oil and the wax need to be at the same temperature to mix properly.
If you don't you'll get hard bits of wax floating around in a not quite hard enough ointment.
Pyrex and the microwave are your friend these days
I used to have to skiddle around with bain marie and hot water and yeah, fuss and bother. I just use wee pyrex dishes, or old mugs
and the microwave heats it all up nicely.
Better yet if you have a wee jar and that jar is the one you're going to store the cream in, totally mess free
We're aiming for a salve, something that we can gently rub in, not some thing hard enough to polish boots, so, for every six tablespoonsful of oil you can add one of melted beeswax, and stir gently until it all cools down...you can put the mug/jar/whatever into cool water to speed that up if you like.
These days we can buy Vitamin E capsules...that stuff is good for skin, gently preservative, etc., and if you choose you might add the contents of one or two to your infused oil just before you add the beeswax and stir. Not necessary, but a sort of modern addition to an old recipe. That's the point when you can add essential oils of choice too.....such as a few drops of birch to make that amazing Nordic Summer or Smidge stuff
M