Many people are prone to colds during the Winter months so I thought I would collate some ideas on staying well through the cold season.
First, stay warm. Wear wool, alpaca, cashmere, or other animal fibers against your body; wear scarfs to keep the back of your neck warm and a beanie/hat - most of your body heat is lost through the top of your head.
Now, onto the remedies…
Make your own Vitamin C
I like to make Vitamin C Oxymel because it tastes so good! An oxymel is a type of herbal remedy made by steeping herbs in vinegar and honey. I add rose hips, Echinacea, elderberries and orange peel to mine. The whole process will take about 6 weeks.
Place your herbs in a clean jar to half-full or so. Add equal parts organic apple cider vinegar and honey (local to your area if you can find it) to fill the jar. Place a lid on and leave in a dark place such as your pantry for 6 weeks. Strain the liquid from the herbs. Take a teaspoon each day.
Make your own multi-vitamin/mineral
Herbs are packed with vitamins, antioxidants and minerals, yet we don’t usually think of them this way. The most nutritious foods in the world, next to liver, are parsley, nettle, dandelion and coriander/cilantro (I would probably put plantain in this category, too, but that’s partly because it’s my favorite herb/weed).
Here’s the basic herbal tea blend recipe:
gogi berries
nettle
orange peel
red clover
rose hips
oat straw
raspberry leaf
Use equal parts of each ingredient. Mix all ingredients together and store in a well-sealed glass jar. You can add other herbs as well, like Echinacea, plantain, dandelion leaf, licorice (to make it sweet without using sugar), ginger, elderberries, hibiscus (will give it a beautiful pink color)….
Steep for 10 - 15 minutes, then drink with lemon and/or honey if you like. You can also make this into a cold tea and drink it with your meals (especially meals that contain iron - red meats, beans/legumes, sesame seeds/tahini, etc. because you need Vitamin C in order to absorb the iron in your food). Drink daily.
NOTE: if you are prone to high blood pressure don’t use licorice for long periods of time
Fire Cider & The 4 Thieves
Both Fire Cider (sometimes called Master Tonic) and 4 Thieves are tonics - medicinal herbs steeped in organic apple cider vinegar (ACV).
The 4 Thieves story dates back to the Plague - a band of notorious thieves were finally caught after robbing from the ill. When asked how it was that they did not get sick, they credited a daily dose of vinegar steeped with medicinal herbs (sage, rosemary, lavender, juniper berries, oregano, thyme - of course, the herbs used will vary depending on the version of this story you read, but this is what I use).
The process is simple: fill a clean glass jar with the herbs listed above, cover with ACV and allow to steep for 6 weeks. Strain the ACV and take one tablespoon in water each day.
I discussed Fire Cider in my Autumn Diary post; you can get the recipe there.
Use elderberries to fight off colds
Sambucus nigra, commonly called elderberries, are stimulating to the immune system and are very high in anthocyanins which are the red-purple color pigment in the berries.
You can use the berries in syrups, gummies and teas, but I prefer to make a tincture. I steep elderberries and a cinnamon stick in brandy for 6 weeks, then strain off the liquid and take 1 teaspoon if I feel a cold coming on. You can take 1 teaspoon each day as a preventative, but not over a long period of time as elderberries can be too stimulating. You can add local, raw honey to the mixture if you like, as well as other spices such as star anise, cardamom, ginger and/or cloves.
Eat fermented foods
Fermenting is the process of preserving food using lactobacilli bacteria, also known as lacto-fermentation. Lactobacilli, found on the surface of fruits and vegetables, convert sugar and starch into lactic acid. Most ferments contain bifidobacteria and multiple other strains as well. When fermented foods are ingested, the gut is populated with these friendly bacteria which out-compete pathogenic bacteria and yeast, like candida. Inoculating the gut with these probiotics will keep it and your immune system healthy and strong.
The process of fermenting vegetables increases their nutritional value as well. B vitamins and choline are increased when vegetables are fermented. Fermented foods are high in enzymes, too, which help break down food more thoroughly.
Learn how to make homemade yogurt, labna, kefir milk in my Yogurt and other goodies article; how to make and use Preserved Lemons; and More Ferments like fermented mustard, fermented hot sauce, fermented blueberries and Kiseli Kupus.
Eat healthy fats
When I say healthy fats, I mean butter, ghee, tallow and lard, coconut oil/cream/milk, olive oil, nuts, avocados, avocado oil, fish and cod liver oil, but not seed oils like safflower oil, canola oil, rice bran oil, etc; and definitely not margarine (do you know when margarine first hit the market it was died pink to warn people it was not to be used for human consumption, only animals, and not to be confused with butter!).
We need fat for so many of our processes, like making hormones (which run everything), having energy, nice hair and skin; but also to assist in absorption of fat-soluble vitamins - A, D, E and K. Think of it this way, the fat is the vehicle and the fat-soluble vitamin is the passenger….the fat picks up the vitamins and transports them to where they need to go. So if you consume foods with fat-soluble vitamin without any fat you cannot absorb those vitamins. My advice is to always add butter to vegetables just before you serve them!
Eat wild greens
In my article Eat Weeds, I talked about my three favorite weeds - dandelion, plantain and nettle. Here is a recipe that incorporates all of them….
Verdurette is a salty vegetable stock seasoning made with the sad looking veg you find either in the garden or at the bottom of your crisper. After finding limp celery and browning carrots in the fridge, I decided it was time to make verdurette. The rest of the ingredients I could source from the garden and lawn. Here's how it works:
You need to get together a quantity of greens and/or herbs. I used rainbow chard and parsley from the garden and went foraging around the lawn for edible weeds. I found plantain, dandelion, chickweed, fat hen, mallow and New Zealand spinach (make sure when looking for wild weeds you identify them correctly).
Once you have the greens and/or herbs weigh them. The reason you start here is that they will weigh the least and this is a recipe based on weight. Once you have the weight , say 180g, of greens, then you want the same weight of each of the following:
Celery or lovage
Carrots or other root veg
Alliums (garlic & onion family)
Salt
Weight out each of these 4 groups as you did with the greens. I used yellow carrots, leeks, garlic chives and celery for this batch of verdurette.
Place all veg in a food processor (you may need to do this in batches depending on the quantity of veg and the capacity of your processor) and blitz until well processed; then add the same quantity of salt and mix well.
The finished verdurette will be quite salty to taste and that's ok because it's the salt that is preserving the mixture and you will use the verdurette as a seasoning (in stews, soups, egg dishes, bean dishes, etc) anywhere you would use plain salt or a powdered stock mix or bouillon cubes.
Pack the finished product in glass jars and store in the fridge. It will keep for a year. Give some away as gifts, too - people love cooking with verdurette once they know about it!
Verdurette made with herbs and wild greens is quite nutrient-dense, as well as tasty and versatile.
Keep all the off-cuts from your veg like carrot and onion tops, celery bits, mushroom stems, etc and place them in a bag in your freezer. When you have enough (the bag is full) make some vegetable stock or bone broth.
Incorporate bone broth into your meals
I wrote recently about Traditional Diets and the use of bone broths, you can read about it and get the recipe here.
I hope this helps you to feel ready for Winter. Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below. I would love to hear what remedies you use to stay well in Winter (or any time of year)!
N x