My grandmother believed eating fresh cooked cabbage and eating the juice too would bring back good health.  Now I am 77 years old.  If I told her when I was a youngster under 6 years old I was not feeling good a huge spoonful of Castor Oil would be put into my mouth.  Any memories of your childhood family traditions with foods to help keep you well?   Not food, but,  if I coughed in the night I was awakened by my dad with a huge round ball of Vicks on his finger that  I had to swallow.  I would stop coughing though.  Has anyone read to put Vicks on the soles of our feet to make us stop coughing?   I did stop coughing recently when I did this.  I do wonder? Sandy B

For earaches, my mom would take a diaper, dampen it down and iron it and we would lay our ear that hurt on it.  We took as much heat as we could take without hurting us and the steam would enter the canal.  The very warm steam would break the "pimple" in the ear. It would pop and then healing could begin.

Happy to hear someone else uses the Vicks on the soles of the feet.  The heat on the ear sounds good too.  Thank for your thoughts most appreciated. The meat tenderizer on the jelly fish stings sounds right and I do remember back in the 70's meat tenderizer was used for home remedy problems and I will look up in Google to see what else it was used for etc.  Sandy B

Quote from: songbird

Meat tenderizer for jelly fish stings.

I remember Reckitt's Blue for blue-bottle stings.

Translation?  :dancing-banana:

Sandy, our family home remedies were:  home made chicken soup (it HAD to have onion, carrot and celery) and / or tea with toast when ill w/ flu or cold, and gargling with warm salt water.  
All of it seemed to work!

I presumed the soup cure was just an old wives tale, but a few years ago I read that the combination of onion, carrot and celery synergizes into a strong antioxidant.  Interesting.

You might find this article interesting.



This man, Frenc tal-Gharb, performed many cures with his home made medicine and is considered a holy man by many, me included.

Nadir, you seem to live an exemplary healthy and frugal lifestyle, and you are a font of invaluable information, so I presumed your statement was code for something interesting - I just didn't know what!  I guess I could have done a search.  duh.

So I did a search this morning and lookey here, Amazon has it!  http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003IWUNJU/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B003IWUNJU&linkCode=as2&tag=httpwwwchanco-20
(be sure to go through Cathinfo to purchase   :soapbox:   and pardon the pun emoticon)
This would be good for prepping and/or those of us who make our own laundry detergent.

I was not familiar with that nickname for a Man O'War.  Serious but fascinating defense mechanism on that one.
Elizabeth, what a story - just a piece of that animal caused outrageous pain!  but your guardian angel was right there to assist.  May I ask how the person who helped you happened to have some bleach handy?  LOL!  Just curious.
Once I was snorkeling in the FL Keys and was suddenly surrounded by jellyfish. If you're familiar, you know it happens very quickly. You'll see one or two, and then they are everywhere. Absolutely beautiful too, I must add.  I couldn't fathom (get it? ) how to extricate myself without many stings, thinking it was impossible.   There were no gaps to swim through to escape.  I resigned myself to suffering, but my angel guided me through without a scratch.  Not one.  While others were stung quite badly.

Elizabeth, what a story - just a piece of that animal caused outrageous pain!  but your guardian angel was right there to assist.  May I ask how the person who helped you happened to have some bleach handy?  LOL!  Just curious.
Once I was snorkeling in the FL Keys and was suddenly surrounded by jellyfish. If you're familiar, you know it happens very quickly. You'll see one or two, and then they are everywhere. Absolutely beautiful too, I must add.  I couldn't fathom (get it? ) how to extricate myself without many stings, thinking it was impossible.   There were no gaps to swim through to escape.  I resigned myself to suffering, but my angel guided me through without a scratch.  Not one.  While others were stung quite badly.

I think he must have been a lifeguard, but I didn't ask because I couldn't talk.  I thought what I'd stepped on was a piece of blue plastic from a dry cleaner (they used blue bags in those days).  I was on the sand stunned, on one of the little Keyes close to Key Biscayne by myself and he just showed up, thank God.  

You are so right-- jellyfish are gorgeous creatures in the water.  Saw 6 of them lined up; they were about 12 feet long alongside a coral reef in Jamaica. They look angelic in their beauty.  They were each exactly the same size and spaced in perfect formation.  When I was a kid one of my friend's dad, a Frenchman who had been in WW2, had massive scarring on one of his arms and neck from some mishap in the sea with a Man o' War.  

OOPS! I called Elizabeth Songbird. Silly me!