Garlic is a common kitchen herb with many medicinal uses. It can helps resolve colds, coughs, sore throats, and sinus infections. Externally it can be used for skin infections. For chronic concerns, Garlic helps reduce blood sugar and high blood pressure. It is also helpful to treat Malaria and boost immunity for AIDS. It is famous as a de-wormer. I remember my grandpa taking it powdered on everything. The fresh garlic is the most potent to use medicinally, but I am just not one of those people who can handle a raw clove. The first time I tried raw garlic was in Belize. One of the locals was taking it raw and suggested I try it. Too strong for me! I could barely stand it. The last time I tried raw garlic was when I was really sick with a head cold. I chewed, swallowed and abruptly started into a cold sweat, drooling and was about ready to throw up. I given up on raw garlic for myself. Now I use either cooked garlic or garlic in the sweet medicine form: Garlic Honey.
It's very simple to make Garlic honey for medicinal or culinary use. All you do is chop up a whole garlic bulb: peel and chop the cloves. Chopping helps release the most potent chemical ingredient in garlic is Allicin. Allicin is created when Allin reacts with the enzyme Allinase, which is activated when garlic is chopped or crushed. After your cloves are ready, put them in a clean pint jar. Cover with honey. I used raw wild flower honey. It takes a long time for the honey to seep through all the chopped cloves. So pour slowly.
You can use a knife or a chop stick to get the air bubbles out from among the chopped cloves. The next step is to cover and label and date your jar and put it up in a cupboard for 2-4 weeks. You can use the honey with or with out the garlic at the end of this time. The shelf life of Garlic honey is 3 months. You can take this honey by the spoonful or add it to tea if you have a cough, cold or sore throat.
I love making coleslaw dressing with garlic honey. You can give it a try:
3 tablespoons of herbal vinegar of your choice
3 tablespoons of Virgin Olive or Coconut oil
2-3 tablespoons of garlic honey
1/4 teaspoon mustard seed
1/4 teaspoon celery seed
1/4 teaspoon pepper
Mix the above together and cover with 4 cups of shredded cabbage and 1 cup of shredded carrot. Toss and chill for 2 hours before serving.
This blog post is part of a sweet medicine blog party hosted by Kiva Rose.
7 comments:
This sounds amazing to have around for the fall & winter cold/flu season. Thanks so much for sharing!!
wow!! this is sooo cool! i'm learning so much from your blog. i don't cook (i'm lousy at cooking) so i dun know much about edible ingredients ... plus, i've never followed a blog similar to yours. is the word apothecary? does that sum up what you do? or am i totally out! sorry!! :p but yea... what i'm learning from here ... it's just so new and so cool!! thanks!!
Glad you like this post!
Luthien.. I'm an herbalist at heart :). That is the best word to describe me. So my gardening and medicine making and wild harvesting spill over into this blog. I love adding herbal ingredients to my soaps and balms.
I use garlic with olive oil and rub the feet of my son when he is coughing too much.
Thanks for the tip! I will remember that one.
I really enjoy garlic honey, but I have also tried shallot and onion honeys as well.
I usually mince the garlic quite finely, which minimizes the air.
When my kids were little, we would mince up a clove of garlic, holding it in place, coat it in honey, then turn the spoon upside down in their mouths and swallow, followed by a chaser of water. Somehow having the spoon upside down helped the tongue push the honey through so the garlic wasn't overpowering.
The boys would make it themselves when they weren't feeling well- shocking my mother who couldn't imagine ingesting raw garlic!
I love your posting.
Garlic and honey are good natural medicine.
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