Tag: nettle_leaves

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Beat allergies with Nettle

If you have seasonal allergies, you know they can be challenging, the symptoms can become difficult to tolerate.

Allergic rhinitis is increasingly common. Although this shares the same symptoms as hayfever, these can occur all year round rather than just through the pollen season. Allergic rhinitis can also be triggered by house dust mites, animal hair, traffic fumes, plant moulds, feathers in pillows, cleaning materials, air fresheners, perfumes, aftershaves and deodorants.

Allergies are an immune response to an otherwise harmless substance that comes into contact with cells in the mucus membranes of your nose, mouth, throat, lungs, stomach, and intestines. In a person with allergies, this ends up triggering the release of the chemical histamine. Histamine is a part of the immune system that causes all the symptoms you associate with allergies. Antihistamines block histamine activity, seeking to stop the allergic reaction.

Many allergy medications on the shelves of the drugstores work as antihistamines. But there are also certain foods and plant extracts that may similarly block the effects of histamine.

Did you know that stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) is a natural antihistamine?

If allergic rhinitis brings out itchy skin, bumpy red rashes or inflamed skin you may benefit from nettle. Nettle tea and nettle tincture are widely available. But nettle soup made from freshly harvested nettle leaves is also a great help to ease allergy symptoms.

For a nettle tea, measure one teaspoon of dried nettle to one cup of boiling water. Allow it to steep for 10 minutes, then strain and drink. 

3 cups of nettle tea a day gonna blow your allergy away! 🙂

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Nettle in a Cheese?

In order to preserve milk, it needs to be transformed  into cheese. This process involves coagulating milk and draining off excess liquid. Humans realised the usefulness of this technique very early on and began to produce curd cheese in the 5th millennium B.C. Hard, cooked-curd cheeses appeared in the late Middle Ages. There are thousands of types of cheese in the world today.

Did you know that nettle leaves serve as a preservative in cheese making?

In the United Kingdom, cheesemakers use stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) as a natural preservative. Cornish Yarg cheese is a semi-hard cheese made in Cornwall with a distinctive rind made by wrapping the cheese in nettle leaves. The earliest recipe dates back to the 13th century. “Yarg” is simply “Gray” spelt backwards. It is named after Alan and Jenny Gray, enterprising farmers who found a 1615 recipe for a nettle-wrapped semi-hard cheese in their attic. Today, the cheese is produced at Lynher Dairies Cheese Company on Pengreep Farm, by Catherine Mead.

Cornish Yarg wins international awards every year. Leaf-wrapped Yarg takes about 4-5 weeks to mature, by which time a beautiful white bloom appears on the nettles.

Made from grass rich Cornish milk, Cornish Yarg is tangy under its natural rind and slightly crumbly in the core. The nettle leaves, which attract naturally occurring moulds, are brushed onto the cheese in concentric circles. As the cheese matures, the edible wrap imparts a delicate, mushroomy taste and develops its unique bloomy white appearance.

And finally an English cheese joke:

“What would be a Cornish pirate’s favourite cheese?”/”Yarrrrg.”