Herbal Tea Recipe, Ginger, Honey, and Lemon tea recipe and the basics
This course was originally put out by John Gallagher, L.Ac., CCH of LearningHerbs.com.. I thought it was really interesting, so I editted it and am passing it along for your benefit as well.
Day 2: Ginger tea recipe and the basicsGinger Tea Recipe
Before getting to our ginger tea recipe with lemon and honey, there's a really important point to understand.
When you look in herb books and look up ginger you might find something like this written:
"GINGER (Zingiber officinale) possesses strong antibacterial activity against several food bourne pathogens such as E. coli and salmonella, it is the choice herb for treating colds and flus, it reduces and eliminates diarrhea, relieves pain, stimulates immune activity, reduces inflammation, has clinical uses for burns, and has been found effective in the treatment of cataracts, heart disease, migraines, stroke, bursitis, fatigue, coughs, fever, kidney stones, sciatica, tendonitis, viral infections, indigestion, and dizziness...
That's a lot of uses!
Now, this is all useful information, but all this will do is have you close the book and say to yourself, “WOW! Ginger sure is a cool plant. I am not sure how to use it, but it is sure powerful!.”
This is precisely what I DON’T want you to think.
The authors of the books HAVE TO list all this information. They figure if they pack their books with lots of words, you’ll buy it over the book that doesn’t use quite as many. It’s a great reference, but lacks a little on the instructional side of things.
For now, let’s just pretend that the only thing you have ever read about ginger is that it is an immune system stimulant that is extremely helpful when you have a cold or the flu.
In fact, ALL THE PLANTS WE USE IN THIS COURSE HAVE LOTS AND LOTS OF USES. However, we’re going to focus on one for two uses a plant or recipe. I want to keep it simple.
Even if you are the thorough type of person who wants to know it all now, it's wise to keep it simple at this point. As you gain more interest and have some more time, you can research other ways to use the plants in this course.
When you read about all those uses for ginger, it’s not like you are going to use the same recipe (such as the ginger tea recipe I will give you
in this lesson) or the same home remedy method for each health situation.
For example, the tea recipe below would not be how I use ginger for the treatment of cataracts.
This is where I think people get stuck. You see all these uses for ginger and no clear way to access the plant for your ailment.
This is why John Gallagher created LearningHerbs.com, The Herbal Medicine Making Kit.
He was interested in herbs for about 6 years before someone FINALLY showed him how simple it was to make an herbal remedy. He had ALL the books and read about all the cool things the herbs could do, but there was still this wall between himself and accessing the herbs.
Ginger, Lemon, Honey Tea
What about the lemon and the honey?
Well, lemon is a very powerful plant. For now, I’ll tell you that it is high in vitamin C and contains antioxidants, natural compounds that help protect us from the harmful effects of free radicals. Free radicals cause cell damage and can impair your immune system.
Honey is a botanical medicine. Honey is basically the nectar of plant flowers, then bees suck it out and carry it back to the hive to make honey from it. The nectar contains the essence of the wilds plants that it is gathered from. Honey is so useful that we are using it for three of our lesson days. For now, we are using it for it’s immune enhancing qualities including the fact that it fights bacteria and viruses.
Do you know how bees finally make the honey, I found this (from http://www.pa.msu.edu/sciencet/ask_st/073097.html), that was really interesting...
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Honeybees use nectar to make honey. Nectar is almost 80% water with some complex sugars. In fact, if you have ever pulled a honeysuckle blossom out of its stem, nectar is the clear liquid that drops from the end of the blossom. In North America, bees get nectar from flowers like clovers, dandelions, berry bushes and fruit tree blossoms. They use their long, tubelike tongues like straws to suck the nectar out of the flowers and they store it in their "honey stomachs". Bees actually have two stomachs, their honey stomach which they use like a nectar backpack and their regular stomach. The honey stomach holds almost 70 mg of nectar and when full, it weighs almost as much as the bee does. Honeybees must visit between 100 and 1500 flowers in order to fill their honeystomachs.
The honeybees return to the hive and pass the nectar onto other worker bees. These bees suck the nectar from the honeybee's stomach through their mouths. These "house bees" "chew" the nectar for about half an hour. During this time, enzymes are breaking the complex sugars in the nectar into simple sugars so that it is both more digestible for the bees and less likely to be attacked by bacteria while it is stored within the hive. The bees then spread the nectar throughout the honeycombs where water evaporates from it, making it a thicker syrup. The bees make the nectar dry even faster by fanning it with their wings. Once the honey is gooey enough, the bees seal off the cell of the honeycomb with a plug of wax. The honey is stored until it is eaten. In one year, a colony of bees eats between 120 and 200 pounds of honey. |
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You may need to adjust the amount of honey to your taste. You can even add more lemon if you want. You can even add more ginger if you like it really strong.
When you need more, heat it back up and strain more out. Leaving the ginger in allows it to get even stronger. (Kind of like "steeping" a teabag makes the tea stronger.)
When you feel a cold coming on, make this tea. Drink this tea when you have a cold. Not only does it actually help fight the cold, it also provides relief and tastes great.
Thanks for coming!!
PS.Tomorrow: we'll talk about dealing with digestion issues.
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