When the four sophomore cuties in the carpool asked about today's writing assignment, I enthusiastically piped-up, "Essential oil recipes!" The girls did not exactly share my enthusiasm for proper compounding of natural extracts. They prefer when I write about "the top ten cute cars for cute girls," but when "Scarborough Fair" played on my favorite oldies station, my own darling daughter suggested, "There's an essential oil recipe for you, Mom. What happens when you mix parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme?" I could not resist the dare buried in the ostensibly innocent question. What does happen when you mix-up one of the folk-rockers' essential oil recipes?
Parsley?
We do not often find parsley among our popular essential aromatherapy recipes. We typically find it garnishing our otherwise unpretentious hamburger combos. And about all we know about poor parsley is that it allegedly clears-up your bad breath. So what does happen when you mix a little parsley in your essential oil recipe? A little investigation reveals parsley has more than thirty-five proven medicinal properties, most of which have worked well among herbalists and naturopaths since the Greeks, who also used parsley to crown their champion athletes. Mixing a little "rock celery," parsley's alias, into your aromatherapy mix, you relieve your menstrual symptoms, regulate your hormones, strengthen your loose teeth, and yes, cleanse your breath. Putting a little parsley in the potion, you also increase your stamina and regulate both your digestion and your urinary functions. We clearly have not accorded parsley its props.
Sage?
In my barbarously untutored youth, I imagined sage was toxic, so that one dare not include it in recipes for healthy foods. I was wrong. In some exotic places, people even batter and fry sage leaves, or they eat young sage leaves with sugar, cream, and orange. Sage acts as an antiseptic, antifungal, and antibacterial. Best known for its effects on focus, concentration, inspiration, and motivation, sage relieves anxiety and depression; it also contains a lot of estrogen. Like parsley, therefore, sage relieves menstrual and menopausal symptoms. This strange conjunction makes me wonder whether the girl-"she once was a true love of mine"-suffered premenstrual dysphoria?
Rosemary?
Common in essential oil recipes for hair and scalp, reputed to reverse female hair thinning, and proven to shampoo better than any random six-pack of herbal essences, rosemary remains seriously under-rated among medicinal oils. One of my sources pointed out, triggering my sense of irony, priests and vicars often mixed rosemary in censers for both weddings and funerals. Another source pointed out rosemary rivals rubies' preciousness: From 100 pounds of rosemary flowers, a skilled extractor can wring only eight ounces of its oil. My rosemary research also unearthed a new item for my medical vocabulary-"diaphoretic." Sounds serious, does it not? I felt a little disappointed when I learned "diaphoretic" describes sweat-inducing agents.
