Spices

“Curries, Spices and More…” Cook book is released on Amazon.com.

I could not live without them. They envelop all the cooking I do. If my kids do not have spices in their food they do not find the food tasty enough. Spices make for variety in dishes. A vegetable, fish, meat or a bird can be cooked in a myriad of ways with spices.

I also use spices and herbs to treat common ailments. For a toothache a clove works wonders. Put one clove on the tooth that is aching and bite down on it – the tootache will shortly disappear (cloves have numbing properties). Ginger helps relieve cold symptoms and is great on the stomach. My kids eat raw ginger to stop bilious attacks. Sushi ginger is not a substitute for raw ginger to stop vomiting. My two-year old son would yell “picy” “picy” but he ate the crushed raw ginger and trusted it to help.

Curcumin, which is the active ingredient in turmeric, “has been shown to exhibit antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal, and anticancer activities and thus has a potential against various malignant diseases, diabetes, allergies, arthritis, Alzheimer’s disease and other chronic illnesses,” according to a review in Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology. A glass of milk with a half a teaspoon of turmeric stirred in it, helps build immunity.

Sound sleep comes my way after drinking a tall glass of milk with unsweetened cocoa powder. I have recommended this sleep remedy to my kids who are now grown men. My kids follow my footsteps with regard to this piece of advice – as soon as you wake up drink a warm glass of water with some lime or lemon juice in it. If you can tolerate more water in your system, have two more similar drinks. That’s a cleanse.

Onions are great remedies for many ailments. A few raw onion slices with a squirt of lime or lemon does wonders for the throat. When we had fever and chills, my mother would smash raw onions and rub it all over our bodies. We hated that because of the stink but had no choice but to tolerate it and sleep with onion juice rubbed on us. Another remedy for a wound that is bleeding that my mom used was raw cane sugar.

When we had a wound that bled, in addition to a tourniquet (tying a piece of cloth below the wound to stop the blood flow), she saturated the wound with raw cane sugar and held it tightly and that caused the bleeding to stop..

The staples in my daily kitchen are cayenne (red chillies), turmeric, mustard seeds, coriander, cumin, black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, onions, ginger and garlic. I also use poppy seeds, Bishop’s weed (ajwain), fenugreek, bay leaves, star anise, mace, asafetida, nutmeg, nigella seeds, fennel seeds, tamarind, and kokum. You just need a spice or two to change the texture and taste of a dish. I hope you will experiment with spices through the recipes on this blog and our new book has been released. Most spices are natural immunity builders.

Natural honey works wonders. It brought a bee back to life in my home. A bee had entered my kitchen and was lying limp on the floor. I put a teaspoon of natural honey in a small bowl and put the lifeless bee in it. The bowl was left out in the porch as it was summer time. The next morning the bee started moving and in front of my eyes got up and buzzed away. My yard got pollinated very well that summer and the bee buzzed around me whenever it saw me. Go figure. I have included at least one teaspoon of honey in my daily food intake.

Comments: 2

  1. Mirjam Cole May 15, 2014 at 10:25 pm Reply

    Hi, it was lovely to meet you today. So very glad I asked for your recipe, I cooked the chicken as you said and it was totally delicious !
    It will become a regular in our household ! Thanks again. Mirjam

  2. Shirley Sharma May 16, 2014 at 11:16 am Reply

    So glad you tried it out Mirjam. And, it was great meeting you as well. Please help yourself to the recipes on this site as well. They are all tried and true.
    Best,
    Shirley

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