Pink Yarrow - Yarrow Facts and Remedies

“Tropical and festive, Pink Yarrow is a whimsical, unignorable hue that tempts and tantalizes. Bold, attention getting and tempestuous, the lively Pink Yarrow is a captivating and stimulating color that lifts spirits and gets the adrenaline going.”

 – Pantone 17-2034

For the last day of March we have "Pink Yarrow"as our chosen Pantone colour this week.

Yarrow is a flowering plant that is used for many herbal remedies. It smells similar to a chrysanthemum and its flowers are most commonly white but also come in shades of pink.

You might find yarrow in foods and in particular tea. During the 17^th century it was a very popular leafy vegetable that was similar to spinach and was often used in soups.

Yarrow Remedies:

Topical application is good for skin itch and rashes. It’s good for dry skin and eczema as well.

If you have a cold or flu with a fever (it helps bring the fever down), yarrow is good to have. Yarrow also helps if you’re congested. It helps with the relief of earaches and toothaches as well.

It also helps with cramping and hormonal issues.

Seasonal allergies can be calmed by yarrow tea mixed with mint.

Apparently there is such a thing called a Buckwheat pillows and you put yarrow in them to help you relax.

Taking yarrow before bed also helps you fall asleep if you’re having difficulties.

If you have a wound or bloody nose, yarrow can help to stop the bleeding. It’s known to help with bleeding and circulatory issues.

So there you have it, some symptoms that you never knew could be treated with yarrow.

Flame - Flambé

“A red-based orange, Flame, is gregarious and fun loving. Flamboyant and vivacious, this wonderfully theatrical shade adds fiery heat to the spring 2017 palette.” – Pantone 17-1462

This week we are beginning our 10 week theme of the Pantone top Spring colours of 2017. We love doing the colour of the year post so much that we thought that we would take advantage of Pantone’s list of colours for Spring to inspire the upcoming blog posts. For week number one we chose the colour Flame which is a reddy-orange shade of orange. When thinking about “flame” our first thought was that of food. We thought of spicy food and flames right away, so this week we are going to focus our blog on the art of Flambé.

We won’t attempt to flambé anything for you right now, but we will give you some cool facts about the technique and find some yummy sounding flambé recipes that you can try and we can try one day in the future when we are well prepared to be flambéing around the kitchen.   

Flambé means flamed in French and what you are doing when you flambé something is adding alcohol to a hot pan which causes flames to erupt. When I think about flambe, I think about what I see on TV and in movies when the waiter comes to the table with a flaming pan of dessert, but it can also be used to create savoury dishes as well. The main purpose of the flames is to burn off the alcohol but to keep the flavours to enhance the dish you are making.

The most famous flambé dish is the Crepe Suzette that was created by accident in the 19^th century.

It’s recommended that you use a flavourful liquid that’s at least 40% alcohol when you flambé your dish. Apparently wine and beer do not work as they don’t have enough alcohol content in them so something like rum or cognac is a good idea and adding cinnamon will add to the flavours but will also help with the flames. Another thing to keep in mind is to warm your alcohol first because that also aids with starting the fire.

It is advised for beginners that you take the pan off of the stove top before you add the alcohol and that you use a long handled match so that you are safe from injuries and setting things on fire!

Popular flambé foods:

Bananas Foster

Crepes Suzette

Cherries Jubilee

Steak Diane

Coq Au Vin

Christmas Pudding

Omelette au Rhum

Here is a recipe for bananas foster by Alton Brown that looks good if you’re brave enough to try it at home, if not, next time you’re out try and find a flambéed food on the menu and get a professional to do it for you.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/bananas-foster-recipe

Click this link to see a video of Alton making this creation on GMA...

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/alton-brown-prepares-bananas-foster-gma-16319069

And for something savoury, a recipe for Steak Diane which I found on Epicurious.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/member/views/gordon-ramsays-steak-diane-50082064

Here is a good website that I found which explains the safety procedures while doing flambé and it also provides some good flambé recipes ell.

https://whatscookingamerica.net/flambe.htm

DIY Four Leaf Clover Lantern

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to everyone!

We’ve done something a little different this week and we’ve made a paper lantern with a St. Patrick’s Day theme.

We used the Silhouette/cutting machine to make this but you can easily cut and paste one yourself if you have the patience. If you’re using the Silhouette/cutting machine, pick a lantern pattern and cut out of a primary green paper. The one we chose had a heart/clover cut out pattern throughout it and the top had a scalloped edge with punched holes. We thought that was super cute. 

If you are cutting it on your own, you can scallop the top edge free hand or with a border punch or if you have scalloped scissors that would probably work best. You can make the hearts with a heart shaped punch or you can make another shape. You just want to make sure that you have some holes for the light to shine through.

Then we rolled it into a cylinder and glued the ends together. We used our glue tape with some scotch tape on the inside, but it did come loose after a while so it might be a good idea to use white glue or hot glue. An even better idea might be to use construction paper or regular paper as the cardstock can be a bit heavy for these sorts of things.

Next Nicole cut some clovers out in a variety of greens that we had and then glued them on the lantern.You can find a clover pattern and trace it and then cut it out.

Here is the finished product with a battery operated tea light inside. Cute! You can also put them in front of windows or just use them as decorative pieces. 

*Please make sure that you don’t use an actual tea light with an open flame inside. This may start a fire which would be not good.