If Only There Were an Essential Oil that Smelled Like Teen Spirit

It would totally be in my herbal salve

I am keeping it short and sweet today because I am a busy little elf. My dining room table is covered with handmade holiday gifts in various degrees of labeling and preparation for boxing up and taking to the post office tomorrow. It’s been really fun turning my kitchen into a lab for making herbal remedies, even keeping a lab notebook and jotting down times, temperatures, and volumes.

I learned how to keep accurate lab records at my first post-college job as a lab assistant at a little biotech company called Targeted Genetics here in Seattle. I would keep many, many more lab notebooks after I moved over to Immunex (in the late 1990s, the largest biotech in Seattle) to work in research and development, where I coaxed cell lines to produce specific proteins and measured the pharmacokinetics of blood samples from Enbrel rheumatoid arthritis clinical trials.

However, when I first began making herbal concoctions, I found myself resisting such left brained documentation. I think I saw myself as a free-flowing kitchen witch, able to recall techniques from my past lives with ease. I thought I had ditched my scientist identity long ago, along with the timers we used to have to carry around back in the day, and my carpal tunnel from years of pipetting. Alas, it turns out I enjoy capturing the details of the alchemical process, of being able to witness what happens when I change the ratio of cocoa butter to beeswax in the total volume of infused oil because I have a record of what I did the last time.

Photo by Kadarius Seegars on Unsplash

Oh, and I have been baking, of course. But I won’t say what so I don’t ruin the surprise for those who happen to be on my gift list. It is sweet though, as I promised at the start of this post!