I was stricken with an annoying chest cold this holiday season. I feel fortunate because I know LOTS of people got hit WAY harder than I did with multi-day fevers, chills and misery. My son-in-law and brother-in-law were so stricken!
Even so, I was pretty disappointed as I hadn’t been sick for 2 years…a new record for me. Now, I have some theories about WHY I didn’t get sick for 2 years, but that’s the subject for another post…onto BROTH.
I started drinking vegetable broth instead of coffee a long time ago. I even did an episode on Cook with Jake & Joy on making your own broth and why it’s so beneficial to drink daily and why homemade is much better for you than just getting store-bought.
With that said, I do not regularly make my own broth, because…wait for it…I’m busy/lazy/busy.
So, I limp along with store-bought, albeit good quality store-bought broth and drink it every single morning with a shot of hot sauce splashed in. It’s a GREAT substitute for coffee and the hot sauce really wakes me up!
Today, I dragged my sorry, half-sick self to see my acupuncturist for a non-chest cold related issue but she, of course, wanted to address my chest cold and in addition to putting needles into lots of me, using electro-stim pads and giving me a fabulous Chinese massage (she’s the best!) she gave me a tutorial on how to make my pedestrian, store-purchased broth into a powerhouse healing machine!
I’m like… “Monica! I’m the nutrition expert here…puhleez!”
But I gotta admit…she had some great tips…
It turns out, that the mushrooms I’ve been encouraging you to eat every day have great properties for warding off nasty bacteria and viruses. She recommended adding a full package of mushrooms to my broth and really boiling them in the broth to bring out all of the healing elements of the mushrooms. In my subsequent research, I discovered that Shitake mushrooms are actually classified as medicinal while Creminis, still beneficial, are not. For this reason, I would probably lean more toward the Shitake and using the Creminis as more of a taste and texture feature…I love the texture and firmness of creminis.
She also recommended taking the white bulb of a green onion, which we grow on our vertical aeroponic gardening systems and dicing it on top of the broth before eating to get the anti-bacterial and healing effects of the onion. In India, green onion, or Spring Onion as they are called, are an important part of a healing regimen from colds!
As an aside, she said that if we had fresh Thyme, which of course we do, to take sprigs of it and swirl through the broth just as I was going to eat it…not cook with it.
I have always known that using fresh herbs is beneficial to our health, but I haven’t really studied the health benefits of many individual herbs. I was surprised to read that fresh thyme seriously impacts respiratory health, in particular, it acts as a cough suppressant!
It’s also an anti-bacterial and sore throat remedy, in addition to being a mood booster…so necessary when you’re not feeling great.
I love this simple way to make my easy, store-bought broth into a powerhouse to get me well when I’m a little under the weather. I hope it makes sense to you and that you try it next time you’re struggling with a cold.
And, if you want to use the health secret that Jake and I have been using for 25 years, check out the details here.
And that, my friends, is what broth has to do with it!
