- Top scrambled eggs with minced raw garlic.
- Put chopped raw garlic on pasta and cover with tomato sauce.
- Try minced raw garlic on a piece of hot buttered toast. Delicious!
- Add minced raw garlic to your baked potato.
- Mix chopped raw garlic and olive oil with hot cooked greens like kale or spinach.
DRINK NOURISHING HERBAL INFUSIONS
Nourishing herbal infusions are the basis of great nourishment for the immune system and the entire body. They are full of antioxidant vitamins, minerals, proteins, phytoestrogens, and hundreds of protective phytochemicals that work to help you ward off the flu and colds too. Here's how I make a nourishing herbal infusion:
- Choose one herb: nettle, oatstraw, red clover, comfrey leaf, linden flowers, or violet leaf.
- Place one full ounce, by weight, of any one herb in a quart jar. A canning jar is best.
- Fill the jar to the top with boiling water.
- Screw on a tight lid
- Let it steep for four hours, or overnight.
- Strain the liquid out, squeezing the herb.
- Refrigerate the infusion, where it will be good for 24-36 hours.
I drink two to four cups nourishing herbal infusions daily - over ice, heated up with honey and milk, or mixed with other beverages.
MAKE IMMUNE STRENGTHENING SOUPS
Cooking herbs and vegetables together for a long time extracts minerals, activates immune-strengthening phytochemicals, and increases the levels of available antioxidants. Raw foods weaken and stress the immune system. To make an immune strengthening soup:
- Chop at least half an onion per person and sauté in olive oil until translucent.
- Add at least two cloves of garlic, sliced or chopped, per person and sauté for a minute.
- Add two or more cups of water or vegetable broth per person.
- Add one cup per person of chopped seasonal vegetables such as:
carrots, cabbage, celery, corn, burdock, turnips, potatoes, tomatoes, parsnips (If using canned soup, begin here.)
- Add one small handful of seaweed per person.
- Add one ounce fresh, or one-half ounce dried mushrooms - any kind - per person.
- Add one-quarter ounce dried tonic roots per person.
- Add generous amounts of antioxidant seasoning herbs and some sea salt.
- Bring to a boil; simmer for an hour.
- Turn off fire and let your soup mellow in a cool place overnight.
- Serve it the next day, heated up, with freshly-baked bread and organic raw milk cheese.
Seaweeds build powerful immunity. Kombu and wakame are excellent in soups. Cut them small; they swell to 5-7 times their dried size when cooked.
All mushrooms strengthen the immune system. Dried shitake are available and inexpensive at Chinese grocery stores. Reishii, maitake, and other medicinal mushrooms are delicious, as are the more common button mushrooms, portobellos, and dried porcinni.
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