Concentrated Cold Cure

You get a cold. Your friends find out. Let the frenzy of home cures being! You know the story. Everyone has their favorite treatment. Honey and lemon, ginger and honey and lemon, cayenne pepper and ginger, apple cider vinegar and honey, and on and on. I pulled together what I saw as the common ingredients in all of the cures I've been told about and decided to try mixing them all together...in a concentrated form. Why would I do something so potentially gross? To see what happens of course. My hope is that when I feel a cold coming on I can take a spoon full of this crazy concoction rather than having to drink it by the gallon, or if that proves too noxious I can dilute it in hot water and just save some time and head scratching and I wonder when I have time to go pick up fresh ginger at the store (I don't usually have it on hand).

Gather together the ingredients

About 2 tsp of honey (raw is best if you have it)

1/2 tsp Cayenne pepper (I use a whole tsp, but that's probably way too much)

A hunk of fresh ginger

1 tbsp Apple Cider Vinegar or Lemon Juice (I decided to go with the vinegar as I tend to drink lemon water most mornings)

Tap Water

First chop up the ginger. Minced is best for getting the oils into the water, but I don't think it will complain if you aren't too fussy about it. I had a giant piece of ginger so I used about half and froze the other half.

 Place minced-ish ginger in a small pot and add some water, put on high heat.

 Bring it to a full boil for about 5 minutes. I did this to concentrate the ginger water, but I ended up diluting it anyway. It sill might be good for getting as much oil and stuff out of the ginger as possible.

 Set up strainer while ginger is boiling.

 Mix all other ingredients in your jar.

 Strain ginger water. I let some ginger chunks spill over into the water because I still think they have some goodness to give even after boiling.

Add ginger water to the other ingredients in the jar. Mine is a nice rosy pink because of the Cayenne Pepper. (it turns out my camera lens did get fogged by the ginger water steam after all, oops.)

Finally be sure to label the jar (including ingredients) so you know what the strange concoction lurking in the back of the refrigerator is in the future.

Enjoy to restore good health, hopefully!