Kakahead

‘Tis the season up here in Michigan Land:   bugs are getting ready to invade.  Flu bugs.  Cold bugs.  Hopefully everyone got their flu shot already, right??  Well if not, they’re still available.  GO GET ONE.  Of course, there will probably be a few strains that will fly around under the radar; and people will bring them to work and spread them around for all of us to enjoy.  Coughs and sneezes spread diseases ya know.  Are you suffering from a cold?  Do you hab a stubby doze?  Or maybe you feel achy all over and are trying to cough your head off?  Well, if you must come to work, please don’t sneeze on my phone or anything.  While the flu is attacking, please fight back so the rest of us don’t get sick.

In other words, STAY HOME AND TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF!!

Now, if you are achy and have coughing and stubby doze, you probably  are getting attacked by a virus.  So that means that if you go to the doctor and ask them for an antibiotic, you will get better, right?  Wrong… antibiotics are for bacterial infection.  They just don’t work on the flu.  The onliest thing that will kill the flu is YOU… in other words, your immune system.

So, this here Happy Friday is for me to pass gas.  NO!! That’s not it!!  It’s for me to pass along some tactics that have really helped our family fight the “cold wars” over the years.  We’ve learned from grandmothers, friends, and yes, even those “weird alternative medicine magazines.”   One of my favorite weapons against flu bugs is garlic.  Lots of it.  Sure… people say, “ya, kill the cold and those around you!”  Well, I’m married, and my wife has promised not to divorce me over garlic breath.  This is a very good thing, because we both eat lots of garlic even when we don’t have a cold.  One thing many people aren’t aware of, though, is that if garlic is boiled, it loses a lot of its cold killing power. Also, fresh garlic works best.  “Ok,” you may ask… or not… “how can I use garlic and not boil it??  Anyhow?  You expect me to eat it raw or something you crazy person you??”

Yes.  Eat garlic raw.  Cut a fresh clove in half and swallow both halves.  It actually knocks the snot out of a cold.  Too weird??  Ok, then cook it gently without boiling.  In fact, one of the best cold killing methods we’ve ever found is:

A) Mince 3 or 4 cloves of fresh garlic,

5) Heat one can (or about 20 oz.) of your favorite soup until it just begins to boil

L) Reduce heat and add one teaspoon of ground sage, and also one teaspoon of ground thyme

9) Simmer while stirring for a couple minutes, and finally

!!) Remove the soup from the heat, add the garlic, and cover.  Let stand for 15 minutes.  Eat the soup all gone just before you go to bed and you will kick the germ bugs in the booty.

Then, after you wake up, make with the vitamin C, the zinc lozenges, and lots and lots of water and stuff.  Oh, and not to forget the echinacea tablets.  Or even echinacea tea!!  Blecch you say?  Well it isn’t that bad ya know…

On the other hand, you have an ounce of prevention.  You know, eat yogurt several times a week.  Have generous portions of green vegetables and fruit.  And then there’s that nasty “E” word (exercise).

Back to this garlic monkey business:  call me crazy if you want.  I like garlic.  I eat it even when I’m not sick, because as my Grandma used to say, “it’s good for what ails ya.  If nothing ails ya, it’s good for that too.”   I like yogurt.  I like green vegetables and fruit.  I like… well, ok, sometimes I even…  once in awhile, um…. exercise is good.  I need to do more of that “E” word.  Yes, I am a very sick man.

Come on over some time and we can have a garlic milkshake and some avocado flavored yogurt with a nice salad of lima beans and bananas.  Then we can take turns on our combination treadmill / electric generator and we’ll not only get fit, but you can help us keep the electric bill down.

We try to be hospitable, you know.

And now for some completely different cooking…