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!

Homemade Mouthwash

For a while I didn't have much use for mouthwash. It tasted icky, it burned my mouth, it was expensive, and it was unnecessary. Basically it just wasn't worth it.

Somehow this mouthwash convinced me to give it another go and it has been worth it. I like how I know exactly what's in it, that I can control how it tastes/how strong it is, and I can see how it might make a difference. Best of all, it's really easy.

I'm not going to pretend this recipe is original, but I also can remember where I got it or exactly the proportions of the original so I'm not going to cite where I found it. Anyway, I want you to read my blog, not someone else's :)

First collect all your ingredients.
Peppermint extract
Tea Tree Oil
Tap Water
That's it!

Add about 1/8th to 1/4 of a teaspoon of peppermint extract to a clean empty jar.
Then add about 10 - 15 drops of Tea Tree Oil depending on how astringent you want it to be. I like to think it's doing something so I go heavy on the Tea Tree.
Finally, boil your tap water to purify it then fill your jar with the water. The bonus is your kitchen smells amazing as it cools!



When it's cool pop on the lid, slap on a label and you're good to go. I usually take a good size swig from it daily (sometimes morning, sometimes evening, sometimes both) and it lasts around 2-3 weeks. Also, while it's within the realm of possibility to swallow the mouthwash I wouldn't recommend it, the Tea Tree oil can irritate. Swishing and spitting- save your stomach and have fun while doing it.

Happy hippy child: Air drying clothes indoors

First of all, sorry for the mostly empty drying rack, I only thought to write about writing this post after I put my clothes away.

Right now here in the Northeast it is cold, like really cold. Not as cold as other places for sure, but definitely enough that the heat is on all the time, so why not make it do double duty? At first I was on the fence about air drying versus putting my clothes in the dryer, would they dry as fast? Was it really saving energy if I had to turn my heater up? Would my clothes feel all crinkly? Despite these misgivings I gave it a shot anyway. I was joyfully surprised, my clothes were dry in less than a day and they were not as soft as coming out of the dryer, but not uncomfortable either. I still don't know for sure if it counts as eco friendly if I have to turn my heat up a bit, but I'm going to go with yes because I get two services for roughly the same amount of energy. And if my room has to be a sauna for a few hours there are worse things in life.

A clean happy hippy child

I had a semi-hippy upbringing. I would run around barefoot all summer (maybe spring and fall too), I helped Mom with her organic garden and we composted and such. Not a hardcore hippie upbringing, but enough to teach me the value of not wasting or demolishing natural resources. However, in my teenage years I started backsliding, getting caught up in consumerism and frankly being a bit lazy.

I heard recently some valuable words that reminded me of the importance of living lightly on the land. Pope Francis essentially said that disrespecting the planet and it's occupants is tantamount to disrespecting God, because God created all things. Now you can replace the word god with whatever deity you please to make it meaningful to yourself but the message is the same, the heavy handed way of living is hurting our relationship with our creator (again feel free to substitute your own beliefs, maybe Mother Earth is your creator, not my business to tell you what to believe), and damaging our spiritual selves. I had never really thought about it that way, but it makes sense to me. I feel more grounded and happy when I make things for myself and know they aren't hurting anyone or anything else.

To that end I have started using homemade shampoo and conditioner. I actually tried it for most of my time in Europe when I had to find more heavy things to get rid of and my friend recommended I share her haircare stuff. I agreed and I'm glad I did, it was much lighter and got the job done just as well. It also made my blonde tresses a bit lighter which I don't mind at all. :) I stopped using it when I came home since I didn't have to worry about carrying heavy weight around, but after hearing Pope Francis' point of view I changed my mind.

 

Here is the very simple recipe:
For shampoo use 1 heaping TBLS of baking soda dissolved in 3 oz of water. Kim taught me to put the baking soda in a 3 oz container right before my shower then add shower water to make it liquid. It's easier to carry and much nicer than dumping cold water on your head. Let that sit while you do all your other shower things, then rinse it out at the end.

For conditioner use a spray bottle of apple cider vinegar and spritz your hair top and bottom when you get out of the shower. You'll smell a bit pungent for half an hour or so after your show then the smell goes away. If you can't stand that then spritz in the shower and wash the vinegar out.

The other part of this system is the soft bristle brush. Brush your hair on all sides for a total of 100 strokes. That spreads the oils on your scalp out for more equal coverage on your hair and allowing the baking soda to get down to the roots. You can do this again whenever your hair looks a bit greasy, but not bad enough for a shower.

Because most shampoos strip too much oil from your hair it will probably take a few showers to start feeling really clean. Your scalp needs time to realize it doesn't need to produce so much oil.