In the vein of yet another go big or go home event, today was supposed to be kitchen day in our house! The catch however, occurred in a new addition to my cheese sauce that began late winter 2026, just before spring. Ashley suggested looking into making hummus from chickpea flour. I counted out how many cups of carrot I rough-pureed, and had 13.5 cups, or roughly 27 times the recipe I'd used last time! Out of curiousity, I weighed the various containers, and discovered I've made over 8kg of spicy carrot chickpea hummus! Ashley got curious, and came up with a slightly rewilded herbed chickpea hummus, throwing in catnip. Mint is a common cooking herb in the Middle East and in the Mediterranean region as well. It's flavour blended very nicely with the besan in finger dipped taste tests. I've written down her recipe for future use! We had a great time at Creative Chaos this past weekend! We look forward to establishing a presence at the Kelowna Farmer's Market this summer. We might need rope tied to our ankles to make sure our trajectory doesn't leave orbit! Monday's foraging run had a fun discovery!  Purple/magenta baby cones looking for all the world like little spiky flowers, are appearing at the tips of ponderosa pines in our region!  Ashley stopped to take several photos. We also began our sage harvesting early again this year.  Here's hoping we get enough to last through to next spring. For the full adventure and a few photos, click here: https://naturalhealthgodsway.ca/2026/06/10/of-carrots-hummus-fairs-and-markets-i-hear-the-engines-revving/

This is a VERY busy blog post today! From fairs and foraging, to opportunities and scrambling! If you like to stay current with what we are up to, this is one article you don't want to miss! There are a few photos from Monday's foraging run in here as well: https://naturalhealthgodsway.ca/2026/06/02/ren-fair-creative-chaos-foraging-and-efforts-to-catch-up/

A lot going on in this particular newsletter-style blog post. From workshops and trail tours to foraging runs and upcoming fairs we'll be at, there's lots to catch up on here, as well as photos of various wild herbs in the area. Join the adventure by clicking here for the full report: https://naturalhealthgodsway.ca/2026/04/20/more-foraging-escapades-two-workshop-trail-tours-upcoming-events-this-spring/

Four articles just got a very important update, and I'm starting with the controversy around the most common way people today understand the compound being discussed. But salicylate, or salicylic acid, has recently been shown to revert cancer cells back to their original regular cell DNA programming! These days, we typically associate this compound with aspirin, which is a synthetic drug derived from salicylate found in willow bark. Dr Mercola published an article today with the bombshell research, and I had to include it in the following four articles, along with a partial list of foods that are known to contain salicylate as one of their phytochemicals. If you or someone you know is concerned about cancer, these articles are for you: Controversy Strikes the Grocery List Again! https://naturalhealthgodsway.ca/2022/02/19/controversy-strikes-the-grocery-list-again/ Keytruda – Part 3: Three Drugs That Drain the Bank, and the Foods that Do Similar Tasks https://naturalhealthgodsway.ca/2024/02/11/keytruda-part-3-three-drugs-that-drain-the-bank-and-the-foods-that-do-similar-tasks/ Foods that Beat Back Pancreatic Cancer https://naturalhealthgodsway.ca/2023/02/03/foods-that-beat-back-pancreatic-cancer/ Cervical Cancer – It doesn’t have to be a life or death decision! https://naturalhealthgodsway.ca/2026/02/25/cervical-cancer-it-doesnt-have-to-be-a-life-or-death-decision/

If you've ever made cinnamon rolls, now there's Pine Rolls!!! In the vein of go big or go home, I took the eggless giant cinnamon roll recipe from last year, and made a few adjustments to it. To find out what those adjustments were, and to get the full recipe, click here: https://naturalhealthgodsway.ca/2026/04/09/giant-pine-roll-recipe/

So April 6th was our first spring foraging run. We came back with a bit of yarrow, but not without gathering a full cloth grocery bag of fallen, still-green, fir sprigs! Then we spotted a Ponderosa pine with very loose bark layers. These layers are what I've been experimenting with as a cinnamon-like spice. Looking around at the base of a few pine trees reveals that the trees shed this layer regardless. We can either let it go to waste and become forest fire fuel, or we can do our part in reducing fuel for forest fires while also reducing our need to buy imported goods from overseas. Discovering that Lamb's Quarters are a spinach substitute whether raw or cooked, is another ingredient that doesn't need to be trucked the last mile if it is found growing nearby, or only the price of the gas spent to go get it, which for us, is equal to the cost of gas running to the store. Of course, the fewer runs to the store, the less gas spent. Money saved all around. Maybe this week I'll get around to trying out powdered pine bark in place of cinnamon in a cinnamon roll recipe. If it works, I'll share the recipe and call them pine rolls instead. We will be at the Vernon Wellness Fair April 11th and 12th, with a sniff sample available of Wild Apple Spice. If you live in the Okanagan, hope to see you at the fair, and we look forward to more foraging runs, workshops, etc, as the year progresses. Don't forget that we are available for various bookings this year. See the booking card below: For the full foraging report with photos, click here: https://naturalhealthgodsway.ca/2026/04/06/first-spring-foraging-run/

Our booth made it into this year's photo for the Vernon Wellness Fair happening April 11th and 12th! If you look at the right-hand side of the photo in this press release, you'll see our pop-up apothecary booth, and beside it to the left, you'll see Ashley and I as we chat with someone. https://www.castanet.net/news/Vernon/606646/Vernon-Wellness-Fair-brings-more-than-70-health-and-holistic-vendors-to-recreation-centre New this year at our booth, stop by for a free health assessment making use of your sense of smell to inform the process. The Natural Health Fun Zone has been changed up. Two changes will be present around the teas. One, no jellies or syrups will be present. The second change at our booth is a brand new tea, and our first fully-powdered tea: Wild Apple Spice. This tea introduces new packaging that we will be phasing in across all our blends as 2026 progresses. Wild Apple Spice features entirely Central Okanagan-grown fruit and herbs, and one may surprise you due to how similar it tastes to cinnamon. April 11th and 12th ONLY, you will find a promotion at our booth for my coaching services. $10 off your first 5 sessions, with the first session free, for a grand total of 6 sessions. The catch??? You must fill out and return your client intake form AT the wellness fair! If you hand in your signed form before the end of the day on the 12th, you will be saving $50 across your first 5 paid sessions. Tomorrow is Resurrection Sunday, the most important day of the entire year! Without Jesus rising from the dead on the third day, we would not have the promise of eternal life. So I end with this evangelical/charismatic call and answer: HE IS RISEN!!! HE IS RISEN INDEED!! https://naturalhealthgodsway.ca/2026/04/04/vernon-wellness-fair-news-for-bnhc-and-ashtree-wildcrafting/

So anyone who knows me for any length of time, eventually hears me grouse about the incredible food waste I see occurring every October. This is an incredible pet peave of mine that I’ve had for many years, and it gets my goat every single fall season! The pumpkin everyone loves to carve up, smash and either throw to the chickens or toss in the garbage, is food for us humans as well, in a great many ways. However, after today’s efforts pulling together research papers for the modern day entry on the pumpkin, I’ve now been educated that even the flower and peel of the pumpkin, as well as those stringy bits holding the seeds, have nutritional and phytochemical benefit to the human body. So today I am attaching the rough draft of the pumpkin entry, complete with the opening for the Historically Modern Materia Medica, and the Bibliography attached in full, because some of the footnoted numbers go all the way back to early pages of that document. https://naturalhealthgodsway.ca/2026/03/26/pumpkin-a-major-food-waste-pet-peave-and-a-surprise/

Coming up for air as I continue efforts on my textbook before the foraging season kicks into high gear! I realized I haven't posted any new blog articles for literally an entire month! Oops??? This coming weekend, we are at Vernon Shoparama at the Vernon Rec Centre. We will be in the rec centre's gym. In April, we will be back at the rec centre for the Vernon Wellness Fair, and then at Maplefest downtown Kelowna the last saturday of the month. May's craft fair schedule has run off the rails, BUT. . . we end the month at our very first ever Ren Fair!!! As I type, Ashley is working on a leather corsette belt for me! Comparing apothecary outfits to 1850's bar tenders with the age if piracy, and in all three image searches, it was apparent that as an English rider, Ashley's outfit was prebuilt just riding her horse! She had made herself a waspy corsette a few years ago, and that completes her look. The Penticton Ren Fair is happening May 30th! Do keep tabs on our 2026 Where We'll Be card, and/or to the website calendar, clickable from the main menu bar across the top of my website. We've also discovered the wonders of turning pine bark into a spice similar to cinnamon, with a flavour profile similar to cinnamon as well. It lends the same flavour style to things like apple fritters, apple crumble, pumpkin spice blend, etc. We are changing up the tea packaging by the way! This is more cost effective for us, takes the same length of time to put together as the current packaging, but takes up less space, and is easier to use. Just keep the string for your own storage as you will need it to close the package. Wild Apple Spice is the first tea to use this packaging. With plants coming to life around the valley, now is the time to be planning for foraging workshops. It's going to be a knock-em-out year this year (on many levels)! Here's hoping if you live in the Okanagan, to see you around at various fairs we'll be at! https://naturalhealthgodsway.ca/2026/03/24/coming-up-for-air-update-on-book-efforts-spring-outlook-news/

This article has had it's second update in a single month! This time around a variant of vit B1, that most people think of as a lab creation and not a naturally-occurring compound. Today's edit isn't too far down the page this time, following on a gut health quote from Dr. Mercola. Bioavailability is a big deal to me, because without it, the idea of food as medicine is moot! If your gut can't process it, your body won't benefit from it. Catch up on the latest update for this article here: https://naturalhealthgodsway.ca/2023/09/11/weight-loss-and-diabetes-factors-that-lead-to-them-and-food-as-medicine/