Saturday recipe

I've been really inactive for the past week, what with work, travel and a seriously debilitating viral. Opened up DMC today and realised it was Saturday and the day for posting recipes. I know the rule for recipes is to post things that kids can take for lunch, but I came across a wonderful home remedy today that I thought I'd share. It's easy, fast and tasty, which isn't always the case with home remedies.

This is a remedy for stomach ailments - heartburn or nausea. Just boil 1 tsp each of ajwain ( carom seeds) and jeera ( cumin seeds) in half a glass of water. Once it comes to a boil, strain the liquid. Add half tsp of home made ghee and salt to taste, and glug it down!

Happy Holidays everyone!

Home Remedies

Kodi's mom really came up with a great topic for this month with home remedies. There are so many different ones in each entry - I'm planning to compile them, grouped by ailment type, and keep them at home as a handy booklet.

I remembered a few more home remedies that we use quite often.

For diarrhoea: soak 1 tsp of fenugreek seeds in 1 tbsp home made curds overnight, and swallow it the next morning. This is something we have followed for years and it's quite effective for adults as well as children.

Interestingly, I used to eat 1 tbsp of fenugreek seeds soaked overnight in water to help me lactate better after my daughter was born.

For constipation: Give your child bananas.

For a stuffy nose: inhale in water to which you have added a few drops of eucalyptus oil. Eucalyptus oil drops in a bowl of warm water is also a great way to keep mosquitoes away.

Kai Vaidhyam/Paati Vaidhyam - Grandmother's remedies

When Kodi’s Mom chose the topic of the month as ‘Alternative medicine’ the first thing that came to my mind was my Paternal grandmothers home made remedies for common illnesses like the common cold, stuffed nose, headaches, cold and sore throat. Winter is looming around the corner, the temperatures are dropping pretty fast and toddlers and preschoolers bring an assortment of germs back home from their day care/preshcool. There is gloom in the air and everyone around the house has a blocked nose, cough or fever. My grandmother was an expert in brewing up some home remedies for certain illnesses like these and I would like to share them with you.




Stuffed Nose: One of the most frequent problems during cold weather – for this my grandmother used to resort to a treatment called ’pathu’. This is a paste like preparation that is applied to the nose, throat and forehead and clears up blocked noses in a jiffy. There is a staining potential involved so make sure that your toddler (over 1 year) is wearing an old dress and protect the pillow cases also by laying some old towels on it. On a rough stone, rub a piece of turmeric and collect the paste on a ladle as shown. Mix a teeny bit of sunnambu (calcium carbonate? taken with betel leaves and betel nuts) with it. Heat the watered down mixture until it boils and you are left with a thick paste. When it is still warm apply on the child’s forehead, nose and throat. Let it dry up for a few hours. You can later take this off by wiping with a wet towel. It does involve some work but I can vouch for its healing power. I have tried it many times with my twin daughters and it offers great relief to stuffed nose and head colds in toddlers in the age group of 1 to 3.

Cough: For dry coughs drink a glass of warm milk mixed with panamkalkandu (Palm sugar crystals). I usually stock some during India trips but I am sure you can find palm sugar here in some of the Asian markets. For coughs accompanied with phlegm – mix a pinch of turmeric powder and add some crushed black pepper (2 or 3 pepper corns is sufficient) to a cup of warm milk. For toddlers you can skip the peppercorns and just add some turmeric powder to the milk they drink.

Mouth ulcers: This one is a constant problem in our house with hubby getting mouth ulcers very often in the winter. He is one of those types, who hate going to the doctor or taking pills. It is actually easier for me to get medications into my daughters than trying to make him take a B-complex pill. My MIL had an excellent cure for this. Manathakkali (Black nightshade –courtesy wikipedia) leaves when used along with our regular spinach in cooking is a wonderful way to get rid of these painful ulcers. It grows in abundance in our garden but is generally considered a weed here in USA. My MIL also makes manathakkali vathal (a pickled version of the green berries of the Manathakkali plant). This has a longer shelf life and can be shallow fried with a little bit of ghee and can be eaten as a side dish with curd rice. My granny’s cure for mouth ulcers is to rinse the mouth with a little bit of gingelly oil.

In her post Kodi’s Mom mentioned fenugreek seeds as a cure for menstrual pain and I use it often for that purpose. Recently I read an article about the effect of fenugreek in lowering cholesterol (elevated cholesterol levels is scary but is becoming quite common in the Indian community living here). I use it daily in my sambhar seasoning and also add a spoon of fenugreek to the urad dal/rice that I grind weekly for my idlis/dosas.

Garlic: This is another thing that is commonly found in our kitchens and is renowned for its cholesterol lowering properties. My Mom, used to add this regularly in my post partum diet as it increased milk production in lactating mothers.


I hope you find some of these remedies helpful!

Assorted remedies..

Here I am listing out common remedies from my family that I can recall off the top of my head. They are for a variety of common ailments that we may run into.
As always, please use caution and common sense before adopting any of these. If you feel wary about any of the ingredients or methods, just don't use them.

Nasal congestion
With an eye-dropper or syringe, insert a few drops of sesame oil into the nostril. It might be slightly uncomfortable for the kid, but eases congestion fairly quickly.

Constipation in infants
Typically when solid food or formula is introduced to a breastfed baby, there is some amount of constipation to be expected. I read in assorted sources, and have confirmed from personal experience the use of four P fruits - pear, prune, peach, plum. Fresh form is best...quantity varies depending on infant's age. Start with half of what you would give as a meal and adjust as required. This has been effective for my toddler too - especially pears.

Soak teaspoon of raisins in warm water overnight, and feed infant 2-3 spoons of the water the next morning. According to my mom, this has been a regular diet to all babies in my family - constipation or not, it is healthy and helps build resistance.

Menstrual cramps
I used to get horrible, debiliating monthly pains. Ones that would leave me close to tears. Tylenol would help but I wasn't comfortable taking it every month. So I resorted to my mother's simple and easy trick. Take a spoonful of methi seeds (Fenugreek) and swallow it whole. I treated them tablets - would gulp them down with water. Pain would usually fade away in about 15-20 minutes. If it persisted, another spoonful did the job.
Not recommended for other kind of cramps.

Postpartum water retention
This is a brilliant remedy from my grandma. Apparently, in my mother's postpartum days, new moms would recieve a dry heat pack treatment twice a day on the limbs and tummy area. It served to improve circulation and to heal muscular pain from labor. For me, the problem was bloated legs and feet for nearly a week postpartum. The doctor suggested regular walking and that would have worked, except I was so sore that I could barely put one foot after another. Here, my grandma's suggestion came handy. My mom would iron a thick terry cotton towel folded into layers and dab it on my legs and feet, reheating the towel each time it cooled. This went on for about 20 minutes, twice a day. Three such sessions, and the water drained away completely. (leaving my skin there limp and lifeless, but we will not talk abt taht! Skin was back to normal in a few days.)

Barley water is also known to ease water retention during pregnancy. Cook barley in water on open flame (not pressure cooker), once cooked, separate the water from the grain. Drink about 1/2 cup at a time. No more than 1 cup in a day. And find a spot next to the bathroom! ;)

Hope these help you or someone in your family!

Passed on from generation to generation!

Post by Rachel

I have several..no actually many remedies regarding colds and flu passed on right from my great grandmothers, grandmothers, mother, mil, aunts and so on.. Everybody considers it their right to pitch in with their remedies.. Some of the remedies work ..some don't and neither of them are amused when you tell them that their remedy didn't work..

Anyways if your child or for matter even an adult is suffering from cough, what you need to do is to roast a few cloves of garlic and then mash it..and apply the paste on the throat..It does cause a relief…

For a nose block, roast a pepper corn and let the child inhale the smoke.

A spoon of honey a day is healthy for the child. And now since L is three, I mix a little turmeric powder in the honey when she has a cold or any other symptoms.

I soak two almonds the previous night and get her to eat them the next morning. This has increased her immunity. If it has to be force fed..do it..I powder the soaked almonds and mix it in the honey and make her have it.

Ginger mashed mixed with honey is also another remedy to prevent cold.

If the child has trouble sleeping because of a congested chest, mash garlic into ghee and massage it onto their chest and back before they are put to sleep.

There are more and it would take days to type it all in..

These are some of the most useful and very productive at that..

Home made remedies

It's interesting that world over, different cultures have different home remedies for the same old ailments. In India, as always taking diversity to the extreme, it often seems like each family has their own unique set of remedies that are passed on.

Four years ago, when my son was a few months old, I was visiting my relatives in Bangalore when he developed a streaming cold. I didn't want to give him allopathic medicine without his regular paediatrician's advice, and somehow I have never found homoeopathy to work for me - too impatient, I guess. My atte ( mama's wife) came up with something that literally dried up his cold that same day. It's so simple too, and works wonders on small babies. Just take 1 tsp of milk, put 3-4 strands of saffron into it, heat it and leave aside for a little while. It will thicken and turn yellow as the saffron is absorbed. Just apply this to your infant's nose periodically. The runny nose will stop in a couple of hoursw. After a few hours, out will come a big sneeze, and that's it!

My dad's side of the family used to brew up a tasty kashaaya for coughs, and given that I almost always had a cough, bronchitis and asthma when I visited them as a child, I sure had a lot of this. Interestingly, I recently discovered that many of the ingredients used are found in ayurvedic OTC cough mixtures:

Boil together - a few leaves of tulsi, 1 inch piece of ginger, 1 few cloves and whole black peppers, 2 inch piece of cinnamon bark and a 1 inch piece of atimadara ( jyeshtha madu - called licorice root in English) - in a litre of water. Keep it simmering for a good 10 minutes after it comes to a boil. Serve it hot ( and if serving to adults, adding a tot of rum won't go amiss:)). It really soothes the throat, and tastes good. If you like, you can add a spoon of honey to this mix for older kids, though the licorice root adds sweetness on its own.

Over the years I've tried a variety of strange home remedies for my asthma, and found that many of them do provide at least temporary relief. One really bizarre thing that worked quite well was having black tea with salt. Another recipe from my ajji's kitchen was roast garlic. I remember her bedtime concoction for my coughs used to be hot milk with haldi and a tsp of ghee, which used to help me make it through the night.

Of course, the age-old remedy of steam inhalation is something that helps adults and kids with coughs and colds. I was really scared about my ability to be able to hold my child securely enough over boiling water so our doctor came up with an easy solution. We now just plug in an electric kettle filled with water under my son or daughter's bed, and make sure the doors and windows are tightly shut. All we have to keep watch for is that the water doesn't evaporate away!