Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Sickness...

We're all sick.  There has been this cold going around my husband's family for almost a month and everyone has it and no one can seem to shake it.  It kind of comes in waves, first was the wave of chest coughing, then the wave of runny noses, then the waves of sinus pressure and ear pain.  Right now, and for the past couple of days, I've just been tired.  

I was telling myself, wow, you are really tired, don't worry about the homesteading blog, but then one of my writer friends, Rudi, reminded me last night of all the great home remedies that one can try.  I thought to myself...well, golly, what kind of homesteader are you not trying out all those home remedies yourself!!!

My favorite home remedy is peppermint tea with honey.  It cures an upset stomach and also soothes sore throats.  Something about hot liquids causes you to cough up all kinds of mucous.  I grew tons of peppermint in the garden last year and dried it in the basement.  I have it crumbled in a tin canister in the cupboard, but I don't want to use it because I want to save it for something...I just can't seem to figure out what.  That is one of the hard things about making your own stuff...you want to save it for something special, which never comes.

A really good home remedy to encourage you to cough up mucous...but that I will never do again...is to gargle with apple cider vinegar.  I have always had a problem with congestion and when I was studying voice in college, my voice teacher, who was probably getting close to seventy, swore by it.  One shot glass (every college student has a shot glass, right?) of apple cider vinegar, gargled as long as you can stand, which if I ever made it past 10 seconds, I was doing good, and you will cough up mucous for 30 minutes or more.

My husband wants me to plan out what herbs I want to plant this year in the garden.  I think I'm going to try to have my own herb garden plat, separate from the regular garden.  I wish I would have done that last year before I planted all that peppermint.  I also planted a St. John's Wort plant last year and a chamomile plant.  I never got enough blooms on either to do anything with them.  I've had tea with both St. John's Wort and chamomile in them and those two seem to work, too.  I never had success with St. John's Wort in pill form, but my husband and FIL have (they may not have admitted it worked, but everyone around them did!).  

I may go through some of my herb books I've collected and see if there are any herbal remedies to try and I'll report back here about the results.  I have one by Deepak Chopra that is kind of off the wall.  I still need to list my recommended homesteader books, don't I?  Maybe I'll do that today during kiddo nap time.

I'm also going to try a no-kneed bread recipe I found on Mother Earth News.  I love fresh bread and if I could stop buying it from Krogers, I would.  I'll let you know how that goes also.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Jenny,
    I really enjoy reading your blog. Herb gardens are a wonderful place to reflect and just enjoy a few minutes of fragant weeding. I also like to plant some annual herbs like parsley, basil, and dill among the vegetables. Speaking of home remedies I thought I would share another one with you. As a child, I remember my Mother sending us out to gather some pine needles, white pine is best, when a cold lingered around too long. She would make pine needle tea and with a little sugar it was surprisingly tasty. I found a recipe for this tea and discovered that pine needles have more Vitamin C than 6 lemons! I hope you are all doing better.

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  2. I thought I posted a reply to this, but I guess not...

    Someone told me once that if you were ever stranded out in the wilderness to look for pine needles and to make pine needle tea. I may actually try this now that someone I know has had it before and liked it!

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