By Jacob Schor, N.D.
Every year, Ken Ball a landscape architect drives in from Morrison to help teach Denver Water's Xeriscaping classes. Denver Water actively promotes the design of gardens and landscapes that don't require watering . In fact they actually invented and hold the patent on the word xeriscape. Every year they teach amateur gardeners like me how to create xeriscape gardens. Included in the $50 class fee are two hours of classroom lectures plus a two hour private consultation with a professional landscape designer.
Ken was my designer. Poor Ken. Armed with a map drawn to scale of house, yard and existing plantings, and photographs of all views of the house and yard, I sat down with Ken Ball and gave him my goal." I want to do this xeriscape thing, but I want only plants that are medicinal or edible!"
If you walk by our house you'll see two new cherry trees in our front yard, Montmorency Cherries. They produce tart pie cherries, in what Ken promises me will be vast amounts.
Cherries are an up-and-coming bright star in the nutraceutical arena. I've written already about the Michigan butcher who added cherries to his hamburger meat, increased the shelf life and decreased the carcinogenicity of his burgers. Now juicy red cherry burgers are on school lunch menus all over the Midwest.
Cherries have a long history of use in treating gout and bursitis. Anyone with a sore shoulder should try eating a cup of cherries a day for a month. A surprising number of shoulders get better on this simple treatment.
The science is slowly catching up. Dr. Muraleedharan Nair a scientist working at Michigan State University suspected that these effects were due to the high anthocyanin content of cherries. In his laboratory he used standard tests to see whether the compounds found in cherries effected the same enzymes targeted by painkillers such as aspirin and ibuprofen. Indeed they did. He found that 20 cherries contained between 12-25 milligrams of anthocyanins which were 10 times as potent at blocking inflammatory enzymes as aspirin. Nair writes, "If a person can consume around twenty cherries, that's enough dosage to act like one or two aspirin a day."
Anthocyanins have pronounced antioxidant effects as well, acting like vitamins C and E. Experimentally anthocyanins enhance the recycling of the chemical glutathione in the body back to its reduced state. Reduced glutathione is one of the body's major defenses against chemical damage and is being used therapeutically to treat a range of conditions from cancer to Parkinson's Disease.
So they are edible and medicinal, but are cherries true xeriscape appropriate plants? Well probably not, Ken tells me they like a good watering every 3 weeks. I've arranged our rain gutter down spouts to allow for a heavy watering when it rains, so perhaps that will work.
Cherries aren't the only plants that act as pain killers. The enzyme Nair was interested in is the cyclo-oxygenase 2 enzyme: it produces inflammatory chemicals. Aspirin stops it from working. The new arthritis drugs, Cox-2 inhibitors, also work the same way. So does ginger. The more ginger a person eats, the less pain they feel. Also like aspirin, ginger will decrease a fever. Unlike aspirin ginger will not injure the stomach, in fact it's often used to calm indigestion, nausea and even treat stomach ulcers. You'll hear more about ginger once I've figured out how to grow it in my garden
For more information on Denver Water's Xeriscaping Classes, call 303 628-6348.
Jacob Schor, N.D., a Park Hill neighbor. majored in Food Science and Product Development as an undergraduate at Cornell University, and received his doctorate in Naturopathic Medicine at National College in Portland, Oregon in 1991. He served as President of the Colorado Association of Naturopathic Physicians from 1992-1999 and maintains a private practice at the Denver Naturopathic Clinic.
Preheat the oven to about 375-400 degrees
4 cups frozen cherries: thaw them ahead of time or in the oven while it preheats or in a microwave.
To the thawed cherries add:
- sweetener: (to taste: about 1 cup sugar or 3/4 cup honey, or 1/2 cup fructose. The tarter the cobbler the better (an excuse you have to put ice cream on top.)
• thickener: 2-3 Tb of instant tapioca creates a traditional clear gooey cherry pie filling (corn starch, arrowroot starch, or flour also work)
• Almond extract: just a tiny bit, maybe 1/8 tsp at most
•
Shortcake dough:
• 2 cups flour:
• 1/2 cup shortening.
• 1 tsp baking powder
1/2
tsp salt
optional things:
• 2 Tbs sugar
• 2 Tbs buttermilk powder
•
1 egg
Add liquid to form dough of your desired consistency: either milk, buttermilk, soymilk, rice milk whipping cream or if desperate, water. The amount needed will vary depending on other ingredients and type of flour. Usually somewhere between 1/2 and 3/4 cup. You have two options: you can make the dough stiff and kneadable to roll out on a floured surface and cut it in rounds. I find this too much of a bother so usually add enough liquid to make a soft dough which I spoon in small lumps on top the filling.
Bake it till the cherries bubble and the underside of the dough isn't raw (check because you'll be really unhappy if it is)
Serve with something cold and white on top: soymilk, rice milk, whipped cream or ice cream.