There’s a lot of common cold symptoms going around now, which seasonally what tends to happen in the winter months. For generations, people have known how to treat this kind of thing at home.
Last week I heard one of sons coughing at night and the next morning told him how much vitamin C to take. After a few days, I heard him still coughing in the night and asked him if he had taken the vitamin C I told him to take the first day. No, he sheepishly admitted. I obviously knew that because he wouldn’t still be coughing if he had!
It’s not as if there’s just one way to respond to cold symptoms, though. There are many different remedies people have used effectively for many generations in cultures across the world to heal upper respiratory illnesses and chest congestion, using ingredients that are natural antibiotics.
Plasters and poultices with onion and mustard as a base were a common practice. There are lots of cough syrup/tea recipes include whiskey or bourbon (‘hot toddy’). Below I’m sharing non-alcoholic syrup and tea recipes variations, so you can see how much flexibility there is with the general concept. (The first two listed are what I make.)
Mix equal parts freshly squeezed lemon juice and honey. Take a spoonful every few hours.
Chop onion, cover with honey. Let sit for several hours; it will become a thin and watery consistency. Strain out onions (you can eat them) and take a spoonful every few hours.
Layer raw onion, fresh ginger and raw garlic into a pint jar until half full and then fill the rest of the jar with raw honey. Shake periodically over twelve hour period. Strain, use like cough syrup, a tablespoon every 4 hours.
Onion tea – boil cut up onions with peels included until soft. Strain, mix with honey and drink hot.
Slice a large onion, sprinkling sugar between the slices and put into a jar. Add water to weight it down. The juice runs out after a few hours, take a spoonful every few hours.
1 teaspoonful each of dried rosemary and thyme. Add boiling water and let it steep. Strain it and drink. Can sweeten with honey and add a sprinkle of cinnamon. Drink hot or cold.
Boil a red onion, drink liquid with honey.
Mix small amount of horseradish/ginger and mashed garlic with honey, pour a cup of boiling water over it. Allow to cool slightly then sip. You can also add couple tablespoons of lemon to the “tea”.
Oregano (natural antibiotic) and thyme (removes mucus) tea with a teaspoon of honey.
Honey-lemon-ginger warm tea, with a bit of coconut oil
Red onions (peel on), lemons (sliced, peel on), honey, garlic, ground horseradish. Ad enough eater to cover, heat until just boiling. Cool. Strain, take a teaspoon at a time or add to a cup of hot water as tea.
Isn’t it marvelous that lemons are in season in the winter at the time that people need that natural vitamin C the most, and that onions and garlic can be stored year round? So even at times that people had no grocery stores, the ingredients they needed to to boost their immune systems were available. These are all very affordable ingredients – even honey, which is the most expensive, is still considerably less expensive than store bought cough syrup with its questionable ingredients!
If you have your own recipe that you’ve found helpful, or use any of these and they work for you, please share in the comment section below.
Did you know that in the US, food waste is estimated at more than 30% of the food supply?
Making changes to the hugely wasteful industrial food system isn’t in our control, but we can take steps to minimize our own food waste. Unless you are an exacting cook who knows precisely how much to make at every meal, most of you have a good amount of leftovers that accumulate during the course of the week.
Generally leftovers are put into containers and pushed to the back of the fridge, where they tend to sit until they turn green or fuzzy and finally are tossed out. Or put into the freezer when after many months you’re ready to clean the refrigerator/freezer and toss out all the UFOs (unidentified frozen objects :)) that you find. Storing them lets you think that you’re going to use them because it would be wasteful to put them directly in the trash, but in the end, most leftovers end up in the garbage.
There’s another possibility, though, that will save you money as you minimize waste and stretch your food budget – creatively repurpose your leftovers to use in creative ways as you create new dishes.
Last night I found myself late to begin dinner preparations, and wondered what I could pull together quickly so dinner wouldn’t be super late. I quickly took stock of the fridge leftovers , and thought about what flavors would go well together.
Here’s what I decided to use. As you’re looking at this, take a moment to think what you could turn this into (it depends what else you have in your house and there isn’t one right answer :)).
small container of meatballs (4 or 5) and gravy
baked squash and onions, 1 – 1 1/4 cup
rendered beef fat, 2 tablespoons
roasted zucchini, a few slices
half box of coconut cream
That was it for the leftovers. I threw them all in the pot, mixed it well and added a 1 kg/2 pound bag of frozen peas, and a little less than a half kilo/1 pound of ground meat. I stirred it all together, added some salt and pepper, heated it until the ground beef was done and within fifteen minutes from when I began, dinner was ready to be served. Voila, beef ala king! This goes well with a cooked grain or mashed potatoes, but in that case I just made a really big potful and served it on its own. My kids pronounced it really good.
Those weren’t all the leftovers in my fridge, but the ones that I thought would come together when combined. It’s important to consider what will taste good together, rather than randomly dump different containers into a pot. Sometimes you’ll use just one leftover ingredient in your dish, sometimes you can use a lot (stews are particularly good for this). Every day or two, take a look at what leftovers you have and when you prepare your meals, think about what you already have that you can integrate.
Since I made a large pot of this, I now have beef ala king leftovers! My kids liked this enough to serve it as a stand alone for another meal. But a dish is never appreciated as much as the first time it’s served! Another possibility is to add more chopped onion and carrots, and turn it into a filling for a cottage or shepherd’s pie, topped with a crust or with mashed potatoes, and then baked.
I give this an one example, but I do this regularly throughout the week. I don’t attempt to use all leftovers in one dish, because some flavors aren’t compatible.
Soups and stews are a great way to reuse leftovers. Leftover grains are perfect for thickening a stew, and most vegetables and meats go well together. Add a different sauce or seasoning and you have a completely different dish. Sometimes I have a ‘leftovers train’ when I make a dish out of leftovers, then turn those leftovers into another dish, and yet another dish from those leftovers! And it doesn’t feel to anyone like they’re eating leftovers or feel like a repeat of something they had a day or two before.
Some dips are easy to add to repurpose. Onion dip, matbucha, fresh tomato dip – I stir them into soups or chilis. Others, like chumus or techina, I prefer to serve on their own, though they can be used as binders to hold a loaf kind of food together. You can puree or blend ingredients as well, so they can look different than they did in their original forms.
The one thing that I rarely repurpose are salads with a lemon or vinegar dressing. They have a strong flavor that doesn’t blend well with most main dish recipes, and it’s easy to serve them as a side dish. Still a win when it comes to reusing leftovers.
You might think that this approach takes a mental encyclopedia of recipes, but that’s not the case at all. Just think about what flavors you’ve used in the past together, and continue along the same lines with your leftovers. And if you combine something that isn’t a hit – okay, so you’ve learned something that you won’t do again.
Here’s the simple three step process for using leftovers:
I got a call earlier this week that one of our school children had to go into quarantine. I was hoping that my five year old could have his birthday party in kindergarten with his nine year old brother in attendance before either of them were quarantined and we almost made it, but the night before the party we got a call that ds9 had been exposed to someone with a positive test result. (For those who are new, our youngest two sons have Trisomy 21/Down syndrome and attend a special needs school; our older son began there in the spring, the younger one began in September.) Ds5 had a great party but his brother wasn’t there.
The day after the party I preemptively pulled my five year old out. I took him out not because I’m worried about him getting sick, but because I don’t want to wait for him to be put into quarantine. It’s important for children to have a regular and predictable schedule, and I didn’t want my kids to have the stresses of the staff and scheduling changes that they would have in school while this upheaval is going on, and then to have the restrictions of being in quarantine at home.
That was Monday. On Wednesday, I received a call from the kindergarten teacher that validated the decision to take him out preemptively. In his class, students were exposed to a teacher who tested positive in the afternoon session. (Since my son is the only one who doesn’t attend afternoon sessions I’m wondering who isn’t in quarantine at this point.)
Due to so many staff members at the school getting positive test results (though they all had to get the poke or have regular testing to continue working there), they are combining classes, cutting the school day to half days and there will be no Friday classes. I’m glad they’re finding a way to make it work, and I’m even more glad that those decisions don’t affect us.
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So this situation is providing me with an opportunity.
In recent months I’ve been thinking a lot about homeschooling ds9. When I made the decision to put him in school last year, I felt inadequate in what I was providing for him when he was home, and was sure that the experienced staff could do more for him than me. Though I’m very appreciative of the wonderful staff and all that they do, it’s now clear that I underestimated and undervalued all that I was doing.
What are some of the ways that I think homeschooling would benefit ds9? It’s pretty much the same as for all of our kids, though the stakes are bigger in his case. It would remove the pressures and limitations of the school environment (eg waking up early before his body is ready, the physical exhaustion from 2.5 hours daily of traveling to and from school, the lower expectations academically and behaviorally) while qualitatively offering him better learning opportunities. Being home would benefit his overall health, with more activity outdoors, better quality foods, and lots more love and emotional support.
When he’s relaxed and rested, he’s naturally a much more enjoyable child to spend time with. (Like every single person on the planet!) On the days he stays home from school his behavior and the quality of our interactions is so much improved. There’s no question in my mind that the person he will grow up to be will be dramatically impacted for the good if we make the decision to homeschool him.
That’s where the bigger stakes come in. Kids in special ed don’t get the same experiences interfacing and participating in the typical world as a child in an inclusive framework (be that homeschooling or inclusive education frameworks). I’m concerned that the older he gets, the more limiting the lack of this interaction will be for him. This isn’t a new concern for me; I’ve shared about it before and it’s something I thought deeply about before putting him into the school framework he’s in.
To be good at something, you need to have experience; the more experience you get, generally the more comfortable you feel and the more skilled you become. How can a child learn to interact effectively and appropriately in a world that he has minimal experience with, when there are different behavioral expectations than what he’s used to?
If that all makes sense, homeschooling doesn’t seem like a hard decision. What is there to think about?
My hesitations are regarding my physical ability to homeschool him. Two and a half years after being rear ended and my car being totaled in an accident, my energy remains very impacted and I still need to rest a lot during the day. So my question has been, even if it would be best for him, do I really have the physical and emotional ability to have a younger child who needs a lot of guidance at home? Even with twenty years of homeschooling behind me, this remains a real concern for me.
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Have you ever made bread every week for an extended period? It was part of your regular schedule so you just did it. But if you stopped for a while, then getting back into doing it again felt hard, right?
That’s kind of how I’m feeling about homeschooling ds9. Though I was managing okay when he was at home, there were a couple of challenges together with my energy level, that led me to seek out school as the better option. Now that he’s in school, I see that the support for those challenges isn’t what I expected and isn’t resulting in a better outcome than what I had, but getting back into homeschooling is a mental hurdle.
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I’ve decided to use this quarantine period as an opportunity for me to enjoy being in a homeschooling framework with our nine year old, without any pressure to make an official decision.
Now, if there was the possibility of homeschooling ds5 along with ds9, homeschooling would be an easy choice. They are close friends and play beautifully together, and with the two of them together, they can constructively occupy themselves so that I don’t need to be the source of entertainment all day long. If you’re wondering what the issue with that is: Two and a half years ago we put in our request to adopt him, but were denied by the bio parents. We waited a couple of years and are now putting in our request again. But for now, technically (not in our hearts) ds5 is a foster child and needs to be in school.
So far we’ve been really enjoying our time at home together. We’ve been starting our days with an outing when my energy levels are higher, and that’s been great.
If you’re wondering how could he be wearing shorts and a tshirt in the middle of January – yes, it’s really that warm! Ds9, a doting uncle with his 15 month nephew
Later, when I need to take an extended nap midday, I let them watch educational videos without even a drop of guilt, something that I berated myself for doing last year. I’m much kinder to myself now than I was last year, and it’s amazing how much easier and more enjoyable everything feels without self-judgment!
It’s fun when I discover how I can do things on my own that I previously assumed I had to buy or outsource to others, and making my own apple cider vinegar was one of these things!
It is so easy, frugal and healthy, that I can’t believe I didn’t make this until recently.
If you’re preparing apples for something else, you can save the peels and cores to use to make the vinegar. Technically this is called scrap apple vinegar. Since I try to minimize waste, making vinegar out of something destined for the trash (or in my case, the chickens) is a bonus. However, in terms of the final result, I made a batch of scrap apple vinegar and a batch of apple cider vinegar, and didn’t notice much of a difference between the two.
1- Fill a jar at least halfway with chopped apples or apple scraps. The flavor and color of the final product will be affected by what apples you use; it’s all good. I had a bunch of yellow apples that started getting wrinkly, so that’s what I used.
2- Add water to the jar until it’s just about at the top. Technically it’s best to use filtered water but I’ve always made ferments with tap water. The chlorine evaporates when left uncovered or when covered with a cheesecloth.
3 – Add sugar. The official ratio is 1 tablespoon of sugar per cup of water and 1.5 apples. (I’m not so exacting and didn’t find this formula for the ratio until after I had made a few batches, so I can definitively state that it will turn out fine if you use less. I used four teaspoons for each of the large jars you see below.) If you try to avoid eating sugar, don’t worry about it in this case; the fermentation process will eat it up and none will be left in the final product.
4 – Mix, and cover the jar with a cheesecloth to keep anything from getting in. You’ve now just about finished the active part of making apple cider vinegar. Basically you’re going to let it sit on your counter for a few weeks and stir it once daily. (That’s because the pieces will all float to the top, so stirring it will ensure no mold grows on top.)
5 – Let it sit a few weeks. Taste it. Do you like how it tastes? Then strain it and bottle it. Not ready yet? Let it sit another week or two. Refrigerate once ready.
That’s it!
I previously mentioned that I really liked the taste of this. My husband tasted my latest batch when it was still sitting on the counter, waiting to be strained, and he likes it, too, so it’s going fast!
There are lots of ways to use apple cider vinegar to benefit your health. Lots of people have written about it, so I’ll just link to one of them and let you read what they’ve written. 🙂 I can add, though, that one of my kids had dandruff, and when they washed their hair using this apple cider vinegar as a rinse just one time, there wasn’t a speck of dandruff remaining and the hair looked so shiny and healthy afterward.
One thing I find particularly difficult, is that since homes are smaller in Israel, storage options sometimes limit me being able to buy the way you suggest. Do you have any tips regarding that? Each person can obviously do the best they can given the space they have. But if you have any specific creative storage options, I’d love to hear them.
I have to clarify that I’m not suggesting you buy massive quantities of foods that you’d need a basement to store, though I can see how my example from my US days about buying six months of grape juice would lead you to that conclusion. (Even that was just four cases of juice, stacked in the corner of my very small storage spot at the time.)
Now, practically speaking about finding space for your pantry. Since living in Israel, I’ve lived in three homes with four different kitchens. All of them had fairly minimal kitchens when we moved in, though when we renovated each of them, I was conscious of adding as much storage space to the room as possible.
I’ll show you pictures of what I was working with so you understand I’m not talking from an ivory tower kichen space! Here’s a link to my last kitchen’s before pictures. And the first kitchen in Israel that I renovated. And below is a before picture of my current kitchen. The entire kitchen was just the dark brown (half rotted) cabinets in the corner where my son was standing; in the foreground are some of the new cabinets before installation.
Okay, so onto some ideas for how to maximize storage space!
1)Declutter! Go through your cabinets and get rid of things that you rarely use that that are taking up your precious kitchen real estate. I realize it can be hard emotionally to let go of things you have, but going through this process will leave you room for your money saving purchases. Things tend to accumulate, so I do this periodically.
2)Look at places that you don’t use efficiently. For example, I tend to not use the space under my sink efficiently. Actually, the deeper bottom cabinets tend to be areas that don’t maximize space. (For that reason, I put drawers or sliding shelves into all of the kitchens I renovated, to make those hard to reach spaces accessible.) Any space that isn’t well organized can be reorganized and I’m often amazed how much less space things take up when they’re reorganized!
Another example: I noticed one of my bottom cabinets has two shelves but there is room for three, so I asked my husband to put adding a third shelf onto his do list. (I asked him to do the same thing with a bedroom closet – he’s a good sport about putting things on his list and I’m a good sport about waiting until he has a chance to get around to them.:))
3) Your storage space doesn’t have to be in the kitchen. In the first kitchen I linked a picture to, I had a small laundry porch adjoining (it wasn’t more than a meter wide by two meters long). One narrow side had the washer, on the opposite narrow wall I put a plastic shelving unit that had three shelves. When I got more produce than I could fit into the fridge, I stored it right there next to the kitchen, with the cool air from the outside helping to keep it fresh. I did the same thing in my next home, though the porch wasn’t adjoining the kitchen.
Really, there’s no reason you can’t store your well-sealed non-perishable foods in whatever room you want, even in an entirely separate storage area! I’ve needed my bedroom spaces for clothing and my independent storage room was converted to my office, but know it’s an option to carve out non-traditional spaces wherever you can if it’s worth it for you.
4) Only store what gives you the most savings. When shopping, consider your space constraints, and buy accordingly. I generally buy the more compact items that are on sale, not huge packages that I don’t have room for.
You will never find me with more than one extra package of toilet paper at the very most. I don’t care how cheap it is, it just takes up too much space to buy more than I need until the next shopping outing. Similarly, I’m not going to stock up on napkins to save thirty agurot (ten cents) a package. They take up too much space, so I’ll buy enough for a couple weeks and that’s it. But I will buy tuna when it’s 30% off. That’s a big savings and cans/vacuum packs are compact enough to store in a small space.
5) Split big purchases with frugal friends. You don’t have to buy that five kilo bag of beans and store it all yourself! Ask friends if they’re interested in splitting a big purchase. You all get savings and none of you are stuck with huge quantities.
How much you buy when something is on sale will depend on your budget and your space available. Even buying two 1 kg bags of rice instead of one will save you money! And that doesn’t take much more room.
I think this is obvious, but it bears repeating to be on the safe side. Don’t buy something you won’t use, even if it’s a really good price. That’s a waste of your money and your space. This reminder has saved me lots of space! (I remind myself of this when canning as well: I don’t want to store food that isn’t something I’m likely to eat, even if I could get it for free. It would take up space that could be used for things that I really want to have.)
So don’t be deterred about buying more than this week’s items when you find a good sale. When there’s a will, there’s a way, and I’m confident you can find some space to use!
My daughter called me earlier this week to ask what to give her husband, who was beginning to have nasty cold symptoms. I told her specific doses of vitamin D (based on doctor’s guidelines for the ‘hammer’) and vitamin C , and said I expected he would be fine in the morning. Sure enough, she called the next day to say he was feeling better and back to kollel. 🙂
Vitamin D is the sunshine vitamin, and many have the idea that it doesn’t need to be supplemented if you are outdoors a good bit of time. However, studies have shown that even around the equator where you would assume people get abundant sunlight, many are deficient in vitamin D.
Even though I live in a very hot climate, I stay inside during the hottest parts of the day, wear a sunhat when I do go out, have an olive complexion, and am always wearing long sleeves and long skirts. Not much chance for the sun to get through, even living in a very hot and sunny area! So I have no doubt that supplementing vitamin D will benefit me.
In January 2020 I wrote a post about the using the vitamin D hammer to quickly and effectively treat the flu. That is still really good information so go back and read that if you don’t remember it or didn’t read it then! Little did I know that a short time later, mentioning that this same approach could be valuable in prevention or treatment of the superbug that was circulating would elicit howls of outrage around the world and censure of medical professionals.
But as time has gone on, more and more doctors have been speaking up about the critical importance of vitamin D in strengthening our immune systems, specifically vis a vis the current health situation.
Here’s an interesting interview with two doctors about vitamin D in Israel.
(It’s interesting to read the comments on the video and see what people say about their experiences with vitamin D.)
Here’s another great talk with two more doctors, both of whom have been sharing this information from the beginning of the situation. This video came out when I was in the middle of writing this post, so I decided to add it for you. 🙂 This talk is more technical but lots of great information, including the benefits of sunlight beyond vitamin D.
Information is so valuable, and both worth watching. (I listen to talks like this when I’m working in the kitchen or driving, since I don’t have time to sit in front of a computer to watch.) By watching, you’ll learn how much to take and why it’s so important.
I’m hopeful that as information like this becomes more widely known, more people will have access to tools that they can use to protect their families. Why information about an easily accessible, highly affordable vitamin that could offer so much protection when dealing with the health situation is known but hasn’t been shared by those deciding on worldwide policy is concerning, but our point of power is when we focus on what we can do. It’s empowering to know how easily and inexpensively we can take steps to protect our families.
Here are the vitamin D choices we get for our family; I order from iherb since it’s much less expensive than buying locally and I can get the higher dosage vitamin D capsules that I want. (In Israel they don’t sell anything higher than 1000 iu. Which is fine, but based on the guidelines that I linked above, you’d need to take a bottle full in the course of a day or two if you get sick, which psychologically feels dangerous. Better to just get higher dosage capsules and take a small number, in my opinion.) You’ll get a first time buyer discount by using my coupon code OBO992.
Vitamin D3: 1) 5000 iu, veg capsules (Kof K hechsher); 2) 10,000 iu gel caps (these are not kosher so we squeeze the oil out, there are options to get this in 5,000 or 50,000 iu as well); 3) 10,000 iu kosher gel caps (currently these are unavailable to be sent to Israel). Oil can also be squeezed into the mouths of children (it has a neutral flavor), or rubbed into the soles of their feet or underarms for good transdermal absorption.
I want to stress that prevention is always the best strategy. Yes, you can be depleted and once sick, try to quickly boost your vitamin D levels. But a better bet is to keep your vitamin D levels high to start with. When you’re deficient in vitamin D, you’re at much higher likelihood of getting sick in the first place. I’ve read a lot of anecdotal comments by various medical personnel in past months to the effect those who were most ill with the virus had very low vitamin D levels, and the studies that I’ve read seem to support that.
This week I’ve done some preventative winter health preparations. With all of us spending less time outside in the sun and fresh air, germs more readily stick around and a strong immune system is your best protection.
First of all, I’ve placed an order for our standard winter supplements, classic boosters for the immune system. (At the request in comments, I’m linking to what we order)
Vitamin C: 1) powder, to encapsulate or mix with juice. There are two choices, buffered and unbuffered. Buffered (sodium ascorbate) is the better form to take but the flavor is harder to cover with juice, and some of my kids have expressed a preference for the unbuffered (ascorbic acid). So I buy a three pound container of each one and everyone gets to use what they prefer. I can easily control the dose and give a higher dose than using capsules or tablets, and it’s much more affordable. So that’s my choice, but there are lots of good options if you want to do something different. a) sodium ascorbate, 8 oz (3 lb container). b) ascorbic acid, 8 oz(3 lb container)
My grandchildren also use the vitamin C powder, but chewables are an option for children. Just know that a chewable with 500 mg isn’t much value for sickness on its own, it’s hardly enough for maintenance. But it is easy to give. 🙂
As you can see, I mostly stick with the NOW house brand because it’s the least expensive and the quality is good. When I can’t find kosher alternatives for the kids chewables, I look elsewhere. I’ve found it much less expensive to buy online, and I can get the higher dosage vitamins that they don’t sell locally.
I’ll try to share some details in the next week or so on how we dose vitamin C and D, since it’s been a while since I’ve written about it. Generally when people don’t find them helpful, it’s because they aren’t using enough.
I order from iherb.com; if you are a new customer then you can use promocode OBO992 to get a discount on your first order. (If you use this code, a small credit will be added to my account.)
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I bought dried elderberries at the beginning of October and finally made the syrup this week. I experimented with a batch last year that was very much not a success – I not only used xylitol as the sweetener but I cooked it together with the berries and it was really yuck. So this year I’m back to using honey.
I love using this as a remedy because the kids love it and since elderberries are packed with antioxidants, is so good for them.
Here’s the recipe that I used this time (I made eight times the recipe since the bag I bought has four cups in it):
Elderberry Syrup
1/2 c. dried elderberries
2 c. water
1/4 c. honey
Put the berries and water in a pot and bring to a boil over high heat. Once it’s reached a boil, reduce the heat and simmer for an hour. Strain out the mixture, then mix in honey to the juice. Store in a glass jar in the fridge. (I filled 3 – 750 liter glass juice jars, and canned them in a water bath canner to keep them shelf stable.) A teaspoon or two a day is a good amount, though the kids will probably want much more!
You can add cloves, cinnamon or ginger, and I’ve used cinnamon successfully in the past. But after last year’s fiasco, I wanted to keep it simple this year.
I gave it to the kids for the first time this week, and a sign that it was tasty is that Rafael (who just turned 5 this week!! I know, where has the time gone??), our pickiest eater, asked for more several times. We put a small amount in a cup and give it to them to drink.
As for my cost: I paid $18 for the berries and $5 for honey, so my expenses were $23 to make 2250 ml. A bottle of Sambucol syrup online is about $18 for a 120 – 240 ml bottle. That makes my syrup at least a tenth of the cost of store bought, and it has better quality ingredients to boot.
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A new remedy to me is sarracenia purpurea, good for digestive disorders, skin lesions and other ailments. Fascinatingly, this was even used as a cure for smallpox! That’s just an interesting historical tidbit since smallpox was eradicated in 1978. But after learning about this plant’s properties, it sounded like it could be a useful addition to our family home remedies cupboard. (This was inexpensively purchased on ebay.)
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My first batch of apple cider vinegar was ready a week ago, and though I made a lot, it was so delicious that I drank it by the cupful (!) and finished it in a few days. I have one jar still in the fermenting process that will be ready soon, and started two more large jars this week. I love being able to make things that I thought I could only get at the store. Let me know in the comments if you want a recipe and directions.
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My daughter-in-law called last week to request more of the antibiotic salve I made a couple of years ago. At that time I made a big batch and gave containers to all our married children. Hers is finished and she said it was so effective in treating rashes and cuts that she wants some more. My oldest daughter had told me the same thing just a couple of days before, so clearly it’s time to make some more!
I hopped online to buy the ingredients I had run out of: beeswax, shea butter and frankincense essential oil. I was surprised to find I didn’t have any more frankincense, until I remembered that quite some time ago Yirmi was cooking independently and poured the frankincense oil into the pan to fry with. Whew, that was very aromatic!! And surely cleared the air for everyone in the vicinity of any germ that might have existed. 🙂
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Back in the spring I bought pepper starts at the nursery, that were labeled only as ‘peppers’. They grew beautifully but produced chili peppers, something I don’t care for, though the little red peppers do add some nice color to the garden! I’ve given away some and then it occurred to me to dry some and find some use for them.
One thing I’ve been thinking about making is fire cider, a spicy and warming immune booster made of vinegar, onion, garlic, ginger, horseradish and cayenne (I would substitute chili peppers). As effective as I know this to be from experience, this is more of an adult remedy since my kids tend to not enjoy this as much. If you have additional ideas of how to use chili peppers, please share!
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I bought fresh garlic to make some earache oil. I usually make it on the spot when a child says an ear is hurting. We don’t need it often but it’s nice to have it ready when there’s a need for it, so I’m going to whip up a batch to keep on hand.
The last two years have been trying in many ways for many people, and unfortunately, I believe that we’re far from the resolution of the situation that has been the impetus for so many difficulties.
One great concern to me has been the seeming disappearance of civil discourse, the ability to listen to, dialogue with and even to be good friends with someone who has a differing opinion on a significant issue. It hurts my heart to see the widespread fracturing of families and friendships. For many, many years, people could interface with others of different beliefs in a way that is becoming much less common today. Where has the civil discourse gone, and why has it disappeared?
I don’t
think this has been a sudden shift. For years, we’ve become increasingly used
to communicating with others via a screen, removed from their face, their
expressions, their voice. That has made it easier to forget that there’s
another live person on the other side of
the screen, a person who can be hurt by what you say.
As we have
created more distance between ourselves and others, it’s become increasingly
easy to negate others and their opinions. Social media has become an echo
chamber, with people seeing news that matches their perspectives. But just as
our immune systems are strengthened by exposure to unfamiliar germs, our
emotional and social systems are strengthened by exposure to the thought
processes and perspectives of others.
The cancel culture has been ramping up in recent years, and more and more positions on various topics have become taboo, something to be mocked and denigrated. Gone is the understanding that respectful communication and different voices are important and healthy for our development as a society and as individuals.
Listen first to understand, then be understood: a key principle that I learned initially from Dr. Stephen Covey that has been an integral part of my understanding of communication. To listen to someone doesn’t mean to listen to his words, readying yourself for a response and debate before he’s finished his sentence. It means opening your heart and mind to truly hear how someone else is feeling. We know our own stories so well, and we want to be heard. It isn’t easy to set aside the desire to speak and convince others of the rightness of our positions, and listen with an open mind to someone else.
With the dramatically accelerated censorship that has become an integral part of our media culture, communicating with others of differing perspectives has become much more challenging. We are shown only one perspective, we are told what is right to believe and told that those who don’t have those same beliefs and practices are a danger to the rest of society. Dialogue and sharing of differing opinions has been shut down. This is particularly alarming since historically, censorship of this sort has always been a preface to institutionalized tyranny.
While the alternative news sources haven’t been completely shut down, those accessing a different perspective from the mainstream narrative are accessing information that the vast majority of people aren’t seeing, and as conversations aren’t based on shared information, conversations become fraught with tensions. As a result, people become increasingly committed to their own perspective and can’t fathom how someone can think any other way.
Whether this has been a natural result of the online social world that so many call home, purposeful media manipulation or something else entirely, we don’t have to let ourselves be led down this road. We reclaim our own humanity when we see the humanity in others, as we respectfully acknowledge the right of others to a differing opinion.
Particularly at this time of so many interpersonal frustrations, it’s incumbent on each of us to be willing to open our minds to respectfully listening to someone who has a different point of view. Sometimes when I’m feeling frustrated after an interaction with someone, or even thinking about perspectives that are disturbing to me, I’ll stop myself and think about why they might respond the way that they did. What causes them to think the way that they did? What paradigm of the world might they be operating from, what kind of life experiences might they have had?
I acknowledge that my life experiences and interpretations of events have led me to the conclusions that I live my life by. Others could have very similar experiences to mine and yet come to the exact opposite conclusions. This isn’t rocket science. It’s basic respect for another human being. But what is simple isn’t necessarily obvious.
Times are changing rapidly and it will be our ability to see the humanity in another, rather than caricature him as a member of a group that you’ve mentally written off, that has the power to reverse the dangerous and polarizing road we’re traveling on as a society.
My newest grandson’s bris was a week ago on Thursday, and all of our family members stayed for Shabbos, which was lovely. We held off on my birthday circle for a week to celebrate with more family present. I don’t remember what inspired me to begin the birthday circle tradition and when we started – though I know it’s been at least ten years – but it’s become so rich and meaningful to hear people share what they appreciate about the birthday celebrant, and I personally found it very touching and affirming. (My 28 year old son was amazed at the depth of what his 12 year old brother shared – he said he couldn’t have thought of things like that at such a young age. But then again, he hadn’t grown up listening to birthday circles for years by the time he was 12!)
Sandwiching the enjoyment of time with extended family has been different kitchen projects I’ve been busy with of late.
Making applesauce. Canning applesauce. Using apple scraps to make apple cider vinegar. Canning pomelos. Using the pomelo peels to make a citrus cleanser. Making washing soda. Mixing up a new batch of all purpose cleaning powder (which I’ve been using as a frugal eco alternative to laundry detergent). Making meat broth. Canning meat broth. Canning meat. Canning beans. Canning beef stew. Canning 21 pints of mandarin oranges, then turning them into 7 pints of jam. Making lacto fermented lemons. Harvesting moringa. Drying moringa.
Most of these were new projects to me, and new projects always take more time since I have to learn about it before doing it.
I canned low pressure foods like meat and beans when living in the US but sold my pressure canner when I made aliya over ten years ago. Since the winter I’ve been thinking I really, really want to have a pressure canner again, and been wondering how to get one from the US to Israel (since the shipping and taxes are so high if I have it shipped directly, it would be almost three times the cost of the canner itself!). It finally occurred to me to ask my sister if I ordered one and had it sent to her in the US, would she be able to mail it to me? I am so deeply appreciative for her willingness to help me out, and though I had only asked this favor with the agreement I would pay shipping costs, she refused to let me reimburse her (and shipping was more than the cost of the canner). I can’t tell you how happy I was when it arrived three weeks ago – it’s like having an old friend back in my kitchen with me!
This year I want to spend some time learning more about herbal remedies. I’m heavily reliant on vitamin C, because if you know how to properly dose (most people think that 1000 mg is a normal dose to take when sick and that’s hardly worth anything), it takes care of just about everything. Literally. However, it’s something I order from afar that I can’t manufacture on my own (at least not yet – as I wrote that, it occurred to me that maybe that’s something to research, too!) and with a shaky supply chain it’s foolish for me to rely so heavily on someone else for something critical to my family’s health. While every locale has its own medicinal plants available, learning to use them it requires learning and that takes time!
One beautiful plant I have growing in my garden is ‘sheba’. I didn’t know what it was when I bought it – I thought it was pretty so I planted it. I misspelled it in Hebrew when searching for the English translation, so I didn’t find out what it was for quite some time. I asked others who grew it if they knew what it was, and they told me it was very healthy and useful in multiple ways…but didn’t know the translation. I was excited to finally learn that it’s called wormwood, one of the most powerful anti-fungal herbs in the world. Right in my garden without me realizing it! This morning I was noticing how lush it’s become and it needs to be harvested. That’s now been added to my list of things to learn about. 🙂
A couple of weeks ago, a teacher from a different city that I used to live in called. She was asked to address a group of younger teachers about how to teach students who made aliya, and wanted my thoughts on that.
Oh, boy, did I have thoughts to share!
The first thing I told her was to have her audience imagine being new in a group that didn’t speak their language, not understanding anything going on. How would that feel for them, mature adults with a stable sense of themselves?
Then I talked about it being an act of courage for these kids to come to school every day, and appreciating the challenge they face. They don’t need someone to tell them to try harder (not even ‘encouragement’ – “I know you can do it if you just try harder!”) and they certainly don’t need criticism for not doing better than they are. They need to feel safe and accepted, and be allowed to have their personal timeline of adjusting.
I gave her specific examples of things my children were told or experienced because teachers/tutors didn’t understand their perspective. Among others: 1) a teacher complaining to me about my son leaving his seat to copy from the board and telling me that was disruptive – I explained that as someone new to reading Hebrew, he couldn’t read what it said from his seat in the back and moved to where he could see enough to do what was asked of him. 2) A tutor telling me my daughter was lazy and uncooperative when the school’s Hebrew speaking tutor was teaching her advanced vocabulary words before my daughter even had basic Hebrew words – she couldn’t participate because she had no clue what she was being told. Do you think the negative emotions they had towards the student due to their mistaken perspective came through to the child?
I told her that the main focus shouldn’t be on getting a child to learn something, but rather setting the stage for success in learning. That means showing him genuine warmth, kindness and appreciation so that he will feel safe. A person will struggle to learn when he feels unsafe. And pushing a person beyond his emotional safety level can backfire, as a child may close up into himself or act out as a result. (This is true and relevant of all children, not only those making aliyah.)
The morning after I had this conversation, I went to the home of a new choir member. She had just joined and I saw she was uncomfortable not knowing what was going on, so I offered to teach her the songs up to the point we were at. This lovely woman shared that she moved to Israel when she was nine, and described to me the extreme difficulty she experienced, the struggle to read and speak Hebrew (she spoke French and Arabic), the social ostracization she experienced, perceiving herself as completely incompetent and unsuccessful in every way. As I listened to her, I could see how painful a memory it was for her, even now as a successful woman close to 50 years old.
I told her about my conversation the night before, and she emphatically agreed with everything I had said about the importance of a child feeling emotionally safe and understood, of recognizing the challenge he/she is facing and appreciating the courage it takes to face each new day.
Now, obviously not every child will respond the same way. But regardless of personality, a bit of understanding and appreciation of a child goes a long way.
