Medicine

A cure for what ails you.

Fire sider (fire cider by the fire - geddit?).

What’s ailing you then? Whatever it is I reckon this will fix it. It’s not quite ready but I have sampled some, as has my teetering-on-the-brink-of-ailing husband. I made this after reading a fellow sub stacker Sue Kusch’s post on winter remedies. Sue very generously offered her recipes for free and I have taken up her offer and made some of the Fire Cider Oxymel, not to be confused with oxytocin or oxycontin which would have very different results I suspect, adapted a bit due to lack of some of the ingredients and US/UK measuring. I will put my recipe at the end but full credit to Sue, and the link above will take you the original recipe, plus others which I don’t have the self discipline to make.

It tastes remarkably good, and, according to Sue, can be used to make salad dressings. So, medicine as food, food as medicine. So it should be. My favourite salad at the moment is shredded radicchio and other bitter and spicy leaves with large quantities of sauerkraut. The dressing is a simple cider vinegar one, but when the Fire Cider is ready I will definitely be using that - it will make a perfect winter salad, comforting and shocking in equal measure.

So what else ails you? Your cough/cold/winter gremlins have been taken care of, so what else is going on? For me it’s about balance, and I can’t seem to find it. I can’t think of what I want to say here and yet I have so much to say. Some of it can’t be on here because it’s not all about me, oddly enough, and it can’t be said out ‘there’ because personal/private/mind own business, all that jazz. So, balance becomes a bit askew, weighed down on one side with stuff that is thoughts wanting to be said, the other side light and fluffy and with it’s feet up and not a care in the world.

I look out at the rain and wish it wasn’t doing that. Everything is so wet. I worry about corners of the house which I know, or think I know, are likely to give in to its watery demands. I wish I had won the lottery the last two times I treated my self to a lucky dip for the Saturday night, like the chap in the Ballad of Wallis Island (please watch if you haven’t already, it will make everything feel better), then all my woes would vanish and world peace would be achieved, climate change halted and reversed, Musk would go to Mars and stay there, Trump would arm wrestle Putin and they would both lose and just die of shame.

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At the weekend my friend Natalie and I pulled together an epic event in the form of a Jumble Sale. Except this had rather more glam jumble than those of the olden days that I would attend with my friend Lucy, age 14 (I always grow misty eyed remembered these treasure troves - silk shirts, stout shoes, bakelite phones).

Generalissimo Natalie got the ball rolling some time back and we accumulated an astonishing quantity of fantastic second hand clothing, filling every nook and cranny of outhouses and spare rooms - sorted, tagged, bagged and market ready.

Natalie rallied local cake makers, movers, shakers, the great, the good and helpers of every kind, and on Saturday between us all we raised nearly £4000 to go toward Medecin sans Frontieres’s work in Gaza.

It takes a village - just a few of the amazing people who shopped, ate cake, washed up, sold clothes, cleared up - we thank you.

If you feel you can give a little toward this cause please click on the link below. If you’re a tax payer our benevolent HMRC will add 25%.

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Fire Cider Recipe

I have used cup measurements here because I have a set of them. A cup is 250ml or a Moomin mug full.

• 500ml cider vinegar

• 1 onion, chopped roughly

• ¼ cup fresh ginger, chopped finely - no need to peel

• 1 head garlic, peeled and chopped roughly

• 2 tbls ground turmeric

• 2 tsp powdered cayenne pepper

• ¾ cup honey

1. Combine all ingredients in a large jar and leave in warm place for 4-6 weeks

2. Strain the mixture and refrigerate.

3. Take 1 - 2 tbls daily at the first sign of a cold and continue throughout the illness (which will be very short of course due to benefits of Oxymel!).

I have just realised that Sue said to add the honey after the mixture is strained. Mine already has the honey in it. So, we shall see how that turns out but I have high hopes.