Kill-A-Cold Recipes

For some reason, Cold & Flu season always takes me by surprise.  Here in Texas it is still so pretty outside and all of a sudden, everybody is sick.  Papa the Farmer came down with a cold last week.  He got over it, but not before he passed it on to the little farmhands.  Children (as any parent will tell you) pretty much only get sick at night, so after 3 nights of not much sleep, my resistance was low and now I’ve got it too.  So, the Good Old Days farm is waging full-scale warfare on our colds this week!

Over the past several years I’ve pretty much been perpetually pregnant or nursing and so we’ve turned to natural remedies to help cure many of our ills.  Since so many people are fighting colds right now, I thought I would share with you some of our favorite (and more unusual) natural remedies for the annual fight against colds:

This is a yummy anti-cold drink using herbs!  (See that little farmhand’s face?  This tastes pretty good!)  First, we boiled about 1 1/2 cups water.  After the water boiled we turned the heat off before adding herbs.  (Boiling the herbs will destroy their healing properties.)  Next we added a handful of chopped fig leaves that we picked off one of our fig trees.  We also added a handful of fresh oregano (about 1 1/2 tsp dried oregano), 1 tsp thyme, 5 or 6 bay leaves and some licorice root extract.  Now, I know that sounds pretty yucky, but after we let that steep we added 3 or 4 cups of pineapple juice to make it taste good… and it sure does taste good! 

Onion tea is another favorite of ours that we drink when we have sore throats or coughs.  You would think that onion tea would be so strong, but it tastes so good that the children ask for it even when they don’t have coughs!  First we just chop up an onion and cover it with water:


We boil it and let it steep like tea.  I drain the onion out by placing a strainer over the cup.  (I save the onions to use in soup later!)

Then we add some honey:

  And it is steamy-delicious!