 and welcome to Juana's Jardin. My name is Fatima Colindres and I am a Park Ranger with the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. I am a Community Outreach Ranger which means I have the important job to bring the parks to the people and the people to their parks. I collaborate with leaders from Bay Area community-based organizations who help me bring non-traditional park users to their national parks. In the following videos I will be sharing the story of Juana Briones, medicinal uses of plants native to the Presidio, and how to make corn tortillas in your very own home. But you may be asking yourself why is Ranger Fatima dressed in this outfit? Well, I am remembering a special lady. Her name is Juana Briones and she lived right here in the Presidio just like but she lived in the time of the Spanish, the Mexican, and the early American period. Her name was Juana Briones and she was a local curandera or healer or medicine woman and she used the plants that grow here in this park as medicine. Now we are in a national park and that means that we cannot cut any of the plants that grow here in your national park. Now these plants that you see in my little bouquet, these are plants that were grown at the plant nursery here in the Presidio and they grow them in potted plants and they let me use them for demonstration purposes like I'm doing here today with you. Okay, so if you want to grow your own plants, please do so. They're easy to grow because they're California natives which means that they have been growing here for thousands and thousands of years and you need to do very much to have a beautiful native plant garden in your home if you have the space for it. So what do I have for you today? Well as you can see I have my favorite tea cup because we are going to make some tea today and what are we using for tea? We're going to use these little leaflets from one of my favorite plants which is the yarrow plant. It's right here. This is the yarrow plant. It has beautiful white flowers. Yarrow comes in different color flowers but the one that grows here in our park is the white flower version of a yarrow. A yarrow is very medicinal in that you can use the leaves if you have an aching tooth and you can't get to the dentist but you want to numb the pain. You take these these leaves and you crush them. You can do it with your hand or you can do it with a rolling pin. I'm doing it with my hand and you just put that in your mouth in your aching tooth and numb the pain and it will stop the bleeding. But today we're going to use these yarrow leaflets to make tea. So I'm going to wash my yarrow. I already preheated my water and my tea kettle and I have a little cup right here. Now what I usually do for your purpose I'm going to just put them in the tea cup so you can see the process. You can actually put them in a coffee filter. Okay, wrap them up in a coffee filter and that will prevent your your leaves from going all over the place. What I usually do is I'll take these leaves, put them out like this, get a rubber band or a string and put it directly into my tea kettle and just let it seep in there. But for today's purposes I won't do that because I'm only making one cup just to show you how it's done. I'll just leave it in the in the coffee filter and then just pour some hot water over it and we're going to leave it just sitting in there for a few minutes. Now while we're waiting for our tea to get nice and and stronger or strong I'm going to also show you another plant that grows here in our garden. This plant right here now this is the strawberries that I planted in my garden. I'm going to pick one for the use that I have in my kitchen later on and what I'm going to be doing with this plant is I'm going to be using it as a natural scrub to remove any dry skin especially right now you know we've been staying in place in our homes and we've been washing our hands a lot and we've been noticing that our skin is dry and so we have a lot of dry skin. So this is a natural scrub and Juana Briones and the people that lived in this place before the Spanish would have used this plant not only for food to eat it but also all the little seeds help you as a natural scrub. So you just take these old strawberries that you might have in your strawberry baskets that you buy at the store and just take those old ones instead of throwing them away use them as a natural exfoliant a natural scrub. This is how Juana Briones and maybe some of the Olone people of this area would have used this plant for a natural scrub. So there you are everybody natural scrub with the strawberries and our yarrow tea. So I'm going to take this yarrow out of the water here and so remember when we first started we had our yarrow leaves we washed them and then we put them in a coffee filter here they are there's our original leaves okay and as you can see a little tiny leaf let escape but our tea is ready you'll know it's ready when your water is a little yellow like this. Now the yarrow tea is good for stomach aches they say that you know because it has the that quality of being able to stop the bleeding if you suffer from ailments in your stomach that could be bleeding in some kind of way maybe ulcers they say that this was a medicine that would have been used for ulcers in the time of Juana Briones but I have used it as a medicine and it is a little bit bitter so if you don't like bitter tea very bitter yep maybe you don't seep it as long as I did as you saw it was just during the time that I was showing you how to do a scrub that this tea took effect and it's easy as one two three just heating up your water cutting your little leaflets and just putting them in the coffee filter into your water and you have your yarrow tea all right so that's how it is that's how you can make some yarrow tea but if you don't want to make some tea and all you need is a bandaid because you ran out well you take those leaves just like I told you with the toothache and crush them and put them on that cut and it'll stop the bleeding as well here is our little yarrow and then we also have one more plant that I almost forgot this is our sticky monkey flower our sticky monkey just like the yarrow can be used as a natural bandaid as well these are some of my plants that I love to talk about here in your national park the golden gate national recreation area I hope to see you in your national park but remember when you are in your national park if you see these plants please don't cut them they are indigenous to this area and they are protected because they are growing in your national park so remember have fun be safe and keep your hands clean maybe with some cyanotis I will also demonstrate how you can use this plant right here which is the california lilac or the scientific name for this plant is cyanotis or how I remember it is see I know this as you all know since you're staying at home just like I am you always have to wash your hands right now this the cyanotis plant has lived here for thousands and thousands of years and if you need soap all you have to do during this time of the year in the spring is take a few of the blossoms I always start cooking by washing my hands wet your hands and then look at this you have natural soap from this plant the cyanotis plant okay or the california lilac it has beautiful blossoms as you can see nice blue blossoms sometimes it looks like a bush sometimes it looks like a tree but this is the natural soap that has been used by people in this area for thousands and thousands of years Juana may have used this plant as I am using it today because Juana um knew or learned how to use these plants by the people that already lived here for many many years before Spanish people arrived to this area the olone people and today I'm using it as well to start my cooking demonstration on how to make your own tortillas I want to share with you how to make tortillas from scratch using maseca which is um something you can buy in your local grocery store either a mexican store or the local safeway if you live in a neighborhood where there's a lot of latinx people like myself all right so I'm using maseca which is um corn flour and I'm just putting in some corn flour here uh you can use the measurements it tells you how to do it on the package I just kind of go by my own um way now since I've been doing this for a little while and so what I'm going to do next is come I'm going to add some cold water all right so this is kind of how it looks all right and then I'm going to mix it if you like to wear rings as I do make sure you take off your rings when you're making the tortillas because you don't want to get your rings all full of corn dough all right the other thing that I already have pre-going is my comal or you call it a griddle I have it on and it's nice and hot because as soon as I get these tortillas made I added a little bit more cold water to my mix once we get these tortillas going we just want to throw them onto the comal and cook them all right so I'm mixing the dough now if you were in Juana's time the spanish-mexican period then you would have been doing a little more work than I'm doing today you actually would have had to grow your own corn and here in the prosidio corn didn't grow very well because the prosidio has very sandy soil so the corn would have been grown somewhere else and transported to San Francisco after you had your corn you would have to grind your corn anametate a grinding stone and then after you ground your corn you would get masa this is what masa is or corn dough and spanish is masa and then once uh you have a little ball I'll start off how my mom taught me when I was very young you start off with a ball kind of what like you do with play dough now you have your little ball and then you start using the palms of your hands to turn and press turn and press and so once you get the hang of it you can go a little faster and then you start using your fingers to turn and press the dough so that you're making like a little pancake shape um tortilla okay and once you have a nice and round and evenly flatten I mean mine doesn't look all that great right now but maybe yours will look much beautiful much better you can put it on your comal oh and if it turns up but like mine just did just start over it's okay and reshape it turn and press turn and press turn and press fix any cracks and put it to cook okay and you do the same with the rest of the dough until you are done the has been cooking for a little bit it's going to look like this and once it's looking like this you can flip it over and cook the other side the other ones are not ready yet as you can see all you need is a little bit of corn flour some water cold water is best and then you can make your own fresh tortillas at home just like Juana Briones did so long ago now Juana because she had her farm and her farm workers she not only had to make tortillas for breakfast lunch and dinner for herself and her family but she also had to make them for all those workers that she had in her ranch here's our first tortilla of today thank you so much for joining me in my kitchen I hope you your tortillas turn out as nice as mine delicious