Spring Cleaning

Happy It’s-not-winter-anymore!

We have now entered the days where anything could happen. Cool and sunny, hot and sunny, cool and cloudy, rainy, hail, wind, snow, or any combination of them all. 

Some days are, as my mom calls it “Summer in the sun and winter in the shade.” You never know what you are going to get, but the sun is out longer and the grass is getting greener. All exciting things, especially if you have a moment or two to stop and watch it.

Some people this time of year get the spring cleaning bug. 

I, fortunately, am not one of those people. The thought of dust rags, scrubbing floors with Murphy’s Oil Soap, and defrosting refrigerators exhausts me. 

But there is more than one kind of Spring Cleaning!

There is an internal spring cleaning. Folks back in the day (I love that term, it can cover any time period, from when you were a kid all the way back to when Queen Elizabeth the First was a kid). Anyway, back in the day, people called it a spring tonic. 

And you know what it was…strawberries!

Now strawberries were not the only kind of spring tonic. There were many kinds, just like now there are many kinds of toothpastes, soaps, and shampoos. But they all pretty much do the same thing… make you squeaky clean on the outside. 

But what about your insides?

Up until recently it never occurred to me that I had to take any measures to spring clean my innards. I mean, how often does one look inside, and give a long whistle at the cobwebs, and dust collected there? We don’t have dust inside, so we shouldn’t have to worry about cleaning in there, right? Wrong, and I'll tell you why. Thanks for asking.

When we eat food, there are three main ways our body uses it. WARNING…These are strictly my categories and by no way endorsed by any actual Food or Drug authorized personnel, your family doctor, pharmacist, workout trainer, grocer, or even the little girl riding her bike down the street.

Stuff our bodies use for energy.

Our bodies are efficient biochemical furnaces. Don’t believe me? Touch your forehead. Is it warm? Point proved. The food that our bodies’ use to burn up are; Sugars (quickly), Proteins (medium), and Fats (slowly). Fats are also needed for things like making the membranes that surround a cell and forms a selective barrier, but that’s beside the point.

Stuff that our bodies rebuild with.

I like to imagine that our body is like a factory. Bricks and bricks, hallways and corridors, offices, workers, entrance, and exit, even a garbage chute (guess where that is, hehe). Now while it may have taken 9 months to do the majority of the building, anyone who owns a home knows regular maintenance is needed. 

That is task of the vitamins and minerals for our bodies. Sure it doesn’t seem like we need a lot especially compared to the calories needed to keep that furnace running. 

But when things start falling apart, like a cold hits or some other infection, that’s when we need more vitamins and minerals. Just like you’d need more mortar for a crumbling brick wall. More nails for shingles falling off, and more paint to cover up that hideous color that was on the walls when you moved in.

Stuff our bodies don’t know what to do with.

Our bodies truly are amazing. They can take a breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Break it down, sort it, store it for future use, send it where it’s needed now, convert it into other stuff for long term waiting, and a whole symphony of other things. Completely without our active knowledge and participation! 

Really, we are just driving to work, or sleeping though class, or even doing some dreaded Spring cleaning.

It is a cruel fact of our modern world that there is stuff that we put in our bodies that isn’t food. To the eye, it may look like food, but our very intelligent bodies find out it isn’t. I’m talking preservatives, additives, and other hard to pronounce words on ingredient lists.

 I didn’t think about this too much until I saw evidence of it this winter. I got a bread maker, and so then promptly made a loaf of bread! About a week later, the bread that I hadn’t eaten that was sitting on the counter started to look like my middle school science experiment. Fuzzy!

Oooooh! So that’s how long it takes uncovered bread without preservatives to go bad!

I sometimes feel surprised at myself for realizing things as an adult that I felt I should have known long before now. 

I also have hamburger buns in my kitchen, purchased in January for sloppy joe night. They have not gotten fuzzy yet. I can’t help but wonder, what kind of ultra strong preservatives are in there that is keeping it that way? Stuff to make it look harmless and still edible, these many weeks later, but stuff that my body wouldn’t know what to do with. 

Now all my long-living food has me a bit suspicious.

While preservatives may prolong the shelf life of food, it is completely unknown, and useless, to our bodies. It actually can be a detriment. 

Our bodies can’t burn it like a fuel, it can’t rebuild with it. So a lot of the time it leaves it laying around, untouched. And this unusable stuff gets shoved around and collects in our bellies, thighs, and the jiggly part of our arms. Right, girls?

 

This is where tonics come in. More modern people, like the ones born in this century, call it cleanses. Same idea.

The purpose is to sweep out the stuff that the body can’t use. Right down the garbage chute. 

Strawberries are good for that. Makes sense, to use a spring food as a spring tonic. 

Not only do strawberries have cleaning properties, but they are also a great way to get easy to digest vitamins and minerals back into your diet. Especially important when you were only eating preserved food all winter, or nutritionally devoid food, like the people now-a-days.

But wait!

Here is our modern problem. Before you rush out and buy up little plastic cases of strawberries. There is something you should know. 

Modern farming methods, which include using the spray-on stuff to keep insects, fungus, and basically anything that isn’t people from eating the strawberries, gets coated on strawberries heavily. 

And because we eat the whole fruit and not just the inside, like watermelon, or wash the outside, like apples. We end up gobbling up all that noxious stuff that’s on the skin and has seeped into the strawberry. 

Ironic really, as you are eating strawberries to cleanse yourself, you are also depositing a fresh batch of foreign contaminants that your body has no idea how to use.

If I may humbly suggest, please try and buy farmer’s market strawberries. Ask if they have been treated with insecticides. They won’t be as big, but at least you’ll know everything you are eating, or better yet, your body will know everything it’s eating. 

I once read a Native American legend about strawberries. This is my variation of what I read. If you are familiar with the original, let me know, I will post it. 

Great Lakes Natives called them “Heart berries.”

There was once a medicine man whose heart wizened and shrunk in selfishness. He grew to love the praise he received for healing more than the simple good act of bringing wholeness to a person. He started to purposely make people sick, just so he had the chance to heal them, earn their praise and rewards. He did this for some time. 

            Now the Great Spirit looked at him one day, and saw how small and shriveled his heart had become with corruption. So the Great Spirit picked up the medicine man and spun him around with great force, until the man cried out in terror, promising that he would change his ways. It was then the Spirit released him, but not before the man’s shriveled heart flew out onto the ground, and started growing into the heartberries (strawberries) that we know today.

 It served as a reminder to be generous of spirit, and never let your heart grow shriveled and greedy.

 

One last thing. 

Strawberries aren’t the only good part of the plant. The leaves, when drank as an herbal tea help with blood flow to the extremities. It’s even been used in cases of frostbite to encourage blood flow and warmth to the affected areas. 

This I haven’t tested yet. I’m not quite brave enough to stick my hand into a frozen lake for a half hour, all in the name of scientific herbal testing. But it’s something I am happy I know about when I go hiking or camping in the spring and fall. You too, I hope.

The leaves are not the green bits at the top of the berry, but rather the three leaves with jagged edges that stays with the plant when the berries are harvested.

Crushed strawberries (the fruit) work wonders on sunburns, just like aloe.

And so, my friend, until next week, may you take care of yourself, happily.