Day 6 [21 March 2020]: COVID-19 Lockdown: Survival kits/Home-made Remedy [an extract from the diary]

I thought it may be useful to share this extract from my diary, as I have just made a second batch of home-remedy this morning – to boost the immune system. My parents and I have been ‘on it’ for the last two weeks!

Prevention is better than cure.

If you are a “gingerholic”, “lemonholic” or “honeyholic” – this is it! According to BBC – under the section of ‘Will honey, lemon and ginger ger rid of a cold?’ – “for those of us keen to keep our cold cures natural and delicious, a hot drink containing honey, lemon and ginger has to be top of the list.” The common cold weakens the function of the immune system – and one needs to keep it up now more than at any other times!

1. Ingredients

If you fancy doing it, all you need is:
– fresh ginger
– lemons
– honey

My proportions can be seen from the picture above: I do not follow a recipe – it is a word-of-mouth recipe – and I balance the proportions based on what I have available. This time I had approx half a kg (a pound) of ginger, 3 and a half large lemons, and there were about 7 large spoons of honey left in the jar. One could add more lemons and honey!

For the final result, I got out two smaller jars and a bit leftover, which I mixed into the honey jar.

2. Method

1. Peel the ginger with a potato peeler.

2. Use the grater – not for lemon (left-hand side in the picture) but for parmesan (my London one does not have the parmesan option, but I have a separate one for that – if not available, use the side you do Chedder grating. It will come out in bigger bits like my first attempt some years ago, but it was drinkable).

3. Grate lemon peel, and then squeeze the lemon.

4. Add honey to the mixture.

5. Put the mixture into jars, and store them in the fridge (the last time I did this stuff was 5 years ago and it was fine in the fridge for a month, by which time we drank it all).

3. Use

1. A teaspoon or two – depending on how strong you like it, as ginger has a burning sensation like horseradish – mixed with a glass of water.

2. We do one glass at breakfast time!

[P.S.]

And when in Rome, do as the Romans do.

My morning drink is matched by my mum’s home-made remedy (see below) every morning: a ration of one teaspoon of the ‘stuff’ as a leftover from 2 years ago, while she is preparing a new batch as an emergency relief! My parents and I started ‘this habit’ two weeks ago – at 10 am – but every day it gradually became earlier and earlier – today it was 8 am! It is a lockdown after all!

Such types of home-made remedies are prepared over the summer months – so that they are ready for consumption when colder weather comes in later on in the autumn! The ‘stuff’ is actually based on schnapps – the Germanic and Central European alcoholic beverage made out of different fruits as many people distil it at home! It is what people have been doing for generations! My parents buy schnapps from a local farm, but then they turn it into various medicinal liqueurs by soaking other ingredients in it, such as herbs, meadow flowers, fruits (blueberries), nuts (walnuts) or honey and so on. As in this one (below) – flowers and leaves of wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) are soaked in and exposed to the sun for a while before being ready. One makes anise-flavoured spirits out of this flower, like the French absinthe, but, in these parts of the Alps, it is very popular to produce home-made pelinkovec. Unlike the absinthe, schnapps and pelinkovec do not get beyond 40% alcohol (I think!), but the mixture, with wormwood leaves, is used as a home remedy for various medicinal uses, including indigestion and for infectious diseases!

 

 

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