|
|
||||
| Home |
Fire CiderSo far, knock on wood, I have survived the winter without encountering the flu (bird, swine, regular or high test). And, so far, I have avoided the seasonal plagues: colds, coughs, fevers and congestion. I attribute this to several things: I have no school-aged children; I do not work in an office full of coughing co-workers; I eat well, exercise daily, get plenty of rest - and I regularly imbibe a variety of herbal concoctions. I make my own elderberry elixir and have a spoon or two most days. I eat plenty of garlic (which also helps to keep Typhoid Mary at bay in the checkout line of the grocery store). And I recently made a big batch of fire cider which I sample daily.
Fire cider is not for the faint of heart - or palate. It is made from ingredients that, individually, are powerful tastes: cider vinegar, horseradish, garlic, ginger, onions and cayenne. Together, they are wonderful. Horseradish is said to have antibacterial properties and stimulate digestion; garlic is believed to kill microbes and support the immune system; cayenne is thought to increase circulation; ginger is said to fight off colds and coughs. Here is the recipe I used:
Fire CiderCombine in a glass jar the following ingredients:
I grew or made all the ingredients myself except the ginger (and some of the cider), and maybe next year I will have my own ginger, too. Sylvia Newberry of the Healing Arts Center in Windsor, Vermont gave me a potted ginger plant last fall and explained that it is easy to grow from grocery store ginger. Just get a good fresh piece and pot it up a couple of inches deep in rich soil. In a year it is ready to harvest, she said. Use a pot that is 8 inches deep.
The horseradish needs to be thoroughly washed and then peeled with a potato peeler before using. I cut it into chunks and ran them through the slicer blade of my food processor. I have made horseradish sauce using a blender, but horseradish can be as tough as wood and resists the blade of a blender. I processed the ginger (after peeling) and onions with the slicer blade, too. The ginger and horseradish I then blended with the regular blade of the food processor. Growing horseradish is easy. Getting rid of it is not. So, come spring, if you decide to grow your own, give some careful thought about where to plant it. A friend in Unity, N.H. planted some in a corner of her vegetable garden. It spread. It got mangled by a rototiller and parts of the roots were spread around the garden. She has been fighting it ever since. It has a deep tap root - it can go down three feet or more and will break off before you can pull the entire root. I found that planting it between a stone wall or foundation and a lawn works well. Just don't plant it in a bed with other plants or it may take over. The good news is that it does not produce viable seeds. Horseradish does not demand rich soil and takes very little nitrogen, phosphorous or potassium from the soil. Adding composted manure at planting time is a good idea, and digging deeply to remove stones is smart. As with any tap-rooted plant, horseradish roots will bifurcate if they encounter stones, and smooth, thick roots are the easiest to use in the kitchen. The Johnny's Selected Seeds catalog (Johnny's Seeds or 877-564-6697) is one of very few that offer cuttings, explaining that the seeds are not viable. They ship cuttings in April, "after danger of freezing in transit has passed." But you can also get cuttings from a friend and plant a few this spring. To prepare a horseradish root from a friend for planting, slice off the leaves and the top two inches of the root. Plant the cuttings a foot or so apart, and cover the top of the root with about two inches of soil. Water well, and surround with mulch to keep down the weeds. In a year or two you will be ready to begin harvesting. Horseradish does best in well drained soil, but really will grow anywhere. It will be most vigorous in full sun, but 4 hours is plenty. I called Vermont's preeminent herbalist, Rosemary Gladstar of East Barre, who confirmed that she had developed the fire cider recipe some 35 years ago, but noted she had "adapted it from hundreds of years of herb use." She also suggested adding honey to mellow the flavor. After straining the fire cider, she said you could heat up honey (making it liquid) and add up to a quarter cup of honey for each cup of the vinegar solution. She suggested using it as part of a salad dressing to make it even more palatable. I like making my own remedies from plants I have grown. Fire cider may not be as good as getting a flu shot - but then again it might be better.
|
|||
|
Last update: Friday, January 8, 2010 at 5:59:32 PM. |
||||