Ecotrain is hosting a Medicinal Gourmet Cooking Collective. There are lots of food, herbs and spices from different cultures used as medicine to improve health. As stated by @eco-alex, this challenge is a great opportunity to cook, learn, and experiment with some new ideas and share them in the spirit of good health. This challenge is open to everyone.
The first challenge will focus on the Fire Element or the Heart. This is my entry into this week's Medicinal Gourmet Cooking Collective.
Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food
Garlic is not just a kitchen staple, it has been used as a Traditional Chinese Medicine for a wide range of conditions for thousands of years. Garlic is one of the earliest known plants used in maintaining health and the treatment of various diseases. It is the most widely used natural remedy. Throughout Asia, garlic is considered both a food and a medicine . The characteristic of garlic is warm with a spicy taste.
Garlic is warming in nature and has an affinity toward the stomach and spleen, heart and small intestine, and the lungs and large intestine.
source
Even though garlic has been used as medicine for thousands of years, modern research in recent years has proven that garlic possess anti-septic, anti-bacterial and anti-microbial qualities, it also lowers blood cholesterol and protects the heart. Garlic is known to improve circulation, stimulate the production of white blood cells, and boost immune function. Researches have shown that when garlic is consumed regularly, it helps to protect healthy heart function and is effective in lowering unhealthy (LDL) cholesterol and triglyceride levels.
One Glove A Day Keeps the Doctors Away
Because of all the health benefits of consuming garlic, it is important to include garlic as part of a healthy lifestyle. Cooking garlic may render it a bit less potent, but most of the active compounds will still be active. For complete medicinal benefits of garlic, try eating it raw. However, personally, I don't like raw garlic, but I still want to get all the benefits of raw garlic. I will show you what we do to make sure we are getting as many of the medicinal properties of raw garlic in our daily lives.
Pickled Garlic
I learned to make raw pickled garlic from Rosemary Gladstar's Medicinal Herbs (highly recommend the book as a beginner's guide to medicinal herbs). It is my favorite "medicinal" recipe. Even though raw garlic is quite pungent to me , I like the taste of these pickled garlic and they have all the medicinal properties of raw, fresh garlic.
I make jars of pickled garlic with the organic garlic from my food forest. So far I have only jarred Music and Shantung garlic. This is the main reason I grow so much garlic even though there are only two of us in the household.
How To Make Pickled Garlic:
All you need are three ingredients: garlic, organic raw apple cider vinegar and raw local honey, or some real good honey that you wish was grown locally.
- Fill a wide-mouth glass jar with whole peeled garlic cloves. Add enough apple cider vinegar to completely cover the peeled garlic. Place the jar in a warm spot and let it sit for four weeks.
- Strain the liquid off. Set half of the drained apple cider vinegar aside. Save this liquid for salad dressings. Place the rest of the drained apple cider vinegar in a saucepan and add an equal amount of raw honey. Warm this mixture over really low heat, stirring until the honey is thoroughly mixed into the apple cider vinegar.
- Pour the mixture of apple cider vinegar and raw honey back over the garlic into the glass jar. Cap the jar and let it sit for another three or four weeks in a dark place. Store the finished jar of pickled garlic in a dark, cool place. It should keep for a year or longer.
Eat as many pickled garlic as you like every day. Eat 4 or 5 cloves if using it to treat cold or flu. It is delicious with a sweet and pungent flavor. These tasty pickled garlic have all the medicinal properties of raw fresh garlic. This is a great way to include raw garlic with all the benefits in your diet even if you don't like the flavor of raw garlic. People who sometimes get stomach issues from eating raw garlic can consume pickled garlic and have no, or many fewer problems.
We have been harvesting lots of heirloom tomatoes, so this is how we consume the raw pickled garlic recently. Tomato, basil and pickled garlic. Yummy and healthy!
