Believe it or not, strawberry tops—the part you cut off and toss into the garbage or compost—can be repurposed in a variety of creative ways. While munching on the green tops itself doesn’t sound all that appetizing, you’ll be surprised at how they can be used.
Strawberry Tops Have Health Benefits
Strawberries as a berry are a nutritious, healthy snack, and it turns out, even their leaves and stems pack a powerful nutritional punch, carrying many health benefits. According to the University of Maryland Medical Center, strawberry leaves are high in vitamin C, iron, and calcium, as well as contain tannins, which helps with digestion, nausea, and stomach cramps.
Strawberry tops are loaded with caffeic acid, a compound that alleviates inflammation, which is good news for arthritis sufferers.
10 Things You Can Do With Strawberry Tops
1. Make A Refreshing Water Infusion
Infusing your water with the leafy tops of strawberries adds flavor, and helps to use up those excess pieces that are headed to the compost bin. This works especially well if you’ve cut off too much of that precious strawberry meat. To make, place your cleaned strawberry tops into a lidded container and top with water. Let sit in the refrigerator for a few hours, and sip (you can strain if you prefer). Ten to twenty tops should do the trick, but you can play around with the amount depending on how strong you want the taste. Strawberry infused water also pairs nicely with some cucumber peels or fresh mint.
2. Make Strawberry Vinegar
Fruit-scrap infused vinegar recipes are popping up everywhere. Strawberry vinegar made from your strawberry tops is delicious drizzled on a salad, mixed into a BBQ sauce (or any vinegar-based sauce), or added to a cocktail. To make, cover your strawberry tops with a vinegar of your choice (white, apple cider, red wine, or balsamic). Cover, and allow it to steep for about a week in the cupboard. Strain the mixture and use your strawberry infused vinegar however you would normally use vinegar. Delicious!
3. Go Sweet With Strawberry Syrup
Turn your discarded strawberry tops into treasure by making scrumptious strawberry syrup. Perfect for pouring over ice cream, pancakes, waffles—the sky’s the limit. You can also add this syrup to flavor lemonade, home-brewed kombucha, iced tea, or smoothies.
To make: In a bowl, combine the tops from two quarts of strawberries, 1 cup granulated sugar, and one tablespoon of lemon juice. Stir, cover, and place in refrigerator overnight to allow the contents to soften. Blend until smooth, and then strain through a metal sieve, scraping the sides of the strainer with a rubber spatula making sure to get all the delicious strawberries. This makes about 2-3 cups of syrup and can be stored in the refrigerator for up to two weeks, or longer in the freezer.
4. Blend Them Into A Nutritious Smoothie
Leafy greens are often tossed into smoothies for an additional nutritional boost, but don’t stop at spinach or kale—toss in your leftover strawberry tops in as well. They’ll give your smoothie an extra boost of nutrients. Simply drop the whole berry, top and all (or saved tops) right into your blender. You can also freeze the tops after they have been hulled, saving them for smoothies down the road—making it easy to grab a handful when needed.
5. “Lift” Your Spirits
Kick your favorite cocktails up a notch! Just like water, you can also infuse your favorite alcohol with strawberry tops to make your own custom flavored rum, vodka, or gin. Toss tops into a lidded bowl or mason jar, fill with your choice of liquor, and let the boozy concentration sit for about two days. Strain, and use to shake up a new summer cocktail.
6. Make A Healing Tea
Strawberry leaves have a long history of being used as an herbal remedy. Wild strawberries have more condensed healing properties, but conventional ones will get the job done. Strawberry leaves, like other leaves and herbs, can be used to make a healing tea to treat diarrhea, aid in digestion, combat nausea, and settle an upset stomach. One cup of strawberry leaf tea contains enough tannins to ease symptoms.
Drying the strawberry tops in an oven or food dehydrator will allow you to preserve them for later use when needed. Add three to five fresh or dried strawberry tops to your teacup. Optionally, you can add a teaspoon of other fresh or dried herbs of your choice (mint, verbena, rosemary, lavender, basil). Pour boiling water over the tops and let steep for five to ten minutes. Add a squeeze of lemon or sweetener of your choice. The cooled tea can also be used to soothe sunburned or inflamed skin.
7. Clean And Whiten Teeth
Your dentist will probably never tell you this secret, but strawberry leaves are an effective tooth and gum cleaner. Those tannins act as a powerful astringent, helping to fight plaque and keep gums healthy. Or for a whiter smile, dip your strawberry top into baking soda and rub it onto your teeth. Leave the mixture on your teeth for a few minutes before brushing as usual.
8. Add Them To These Yummy Recipes
Pesto doesn’t have to be all about basil. You can make pesto out of almost anything including strawberry tops. Use them alone or add them to other pesto greens in this no-cook sauce. Strawberry tops combined with parsley, with a touch of garlic or ramps is a delicious and healthy way to use them up. You can also thin out your strawberry top pesto with more oil and lemon juice and turn it into a tasty salad dressing. Or try adding some fresh strawberry leaves to your salad greens–the small leaves add a nice contrast to bigger leafy salad greens.
9. Make An Itch-Relieving Bath
Not only are strawberry leaves nourishing for the inside of your body, but they are also beneficial for the outside. That inflammation-reducing property helps with skin inflammation, too, helping to alleviate rashes, eczema, and even acne. The vitamin C and antioxidants found in the tops are also beneficial for aging skin. Simply fill a tea bag or tea ball with some strawberry tops and toss into the bath with you. Your four-legged furry friends will also love a strawberry top bath, which is especially helpful for pets with dry, itchy skin.
10. Livestock Treats
Share these tasty scraps with your farm animals! Strawberry tops make a great snack for chickens, goats, ducks, rabbits, pigs, horses, and more. It helps recycle your scraps, while also gaining your flock’s love and trust.
Original article here
Yesterday I was chatting with a friend and I found myself saying the words ‘tipping over the vibrational horizon’. I had never used those words before so I set out to discover exactly what I meant by this.
Alchemy has always seemed a somewhat mysterious ability to many people. The word itself evokes a level of power that, in the past, many have been frightened to step into.
Yes, I have blatantly plagiarized the title of a recently released film starring Michelle Yeoh. I’ve not even had the pleasure of seeing this work of cinematic art yet, but I am familiar enough with the plot to know that the central character could represent any one of us. If you’ve seen it, you will know what Michelle’s character is facing. An audit by the Internal Revenue Service, and dilapidated laundry business barely able to provide a living for her and her bumbling husband, and strangers popping in from the future asking for her help to save the world. All in a day’s work I’d say!
The other side of this circus is the possible reality that unity consciousness might bring to us if we had every barrier to it suddenly lifted. We just might flame out and disappear with the sheer immensity of seeing, knowing, and feeling everything, everywhere, all at once. Is that what Spirit/God/Goddess/All That Is experiences? How can one know for sure? How in the heck does the Great Spirit cope with all that anyway? These are some of the questions that I entertain when I wake up in the middle of the night.
On June 11th at 11:51pm BST (10:51pm UT) transiting Venus meets up with and kisses Uranus at 16 degrees of Taurus. Can you say “unusual” or “unconventional” when it comes to sexual loving, flings with the opposite or same sex, and coming to terms with what our true natural values and needs are as regards our sexuality? I knew you could. This transit is brief but can certainly upend your own status quo regarding sexuality, which may lead you into unusual encounters with possible partners or with society at large (“…that is indecent and immoral, and you need to stop that now!”). You get my drift. Judgment always crops up when Uranus is in town and is wearing a bull costume. You may also have unusual and possibly revelatory experiences with your own sexual nature. Uranus encourages exploration and trying new things, so this weekend could be interesting! If you in fact have any aspects to anything at 16 degrees of Taurus, Scorpio, Aquarius or Leo, you may feel this “hit home”. The potential stinger in this conjunction could be a further eroding of the value of Bitcoin, fiat currencies (paper money), and digital money (the M3 money supply). The almost hyperinflation happening is definitely tied to Uranus in Taurus, as is the deflation of cryptocurrency values.