Recipe: How to conquer that pesky cold

I guarantee that this is going to be the most useful recipe ever!!!

As my first recipe post (hopefully the first of many), I really wanted it to be something that you guys can try out at home and actually want to as well. Sure most recipe blogs are filled with foodporn but how often do you go about replicating it, for one there is no real motivation other than the fact that it looks nice but seems like too much effort. 

I'm currently sick at the moment and whenever I feel sick, I guess you can call me a bit of a bitch because I just shut off and act like a walking zombie because that's how terrible I feel. Since we all have different reactions to being sick, I'm sure we can agree that getting better fast is the important thing so because of that I wanted to share some tricks that I swear by.

Warning: I apologise in advance because some of the 'ingredients' I use are the most readily available.

So being Chinese, whenever someone gets sick in my family we turn to Chinese medicine recipes, sure Western medicine is effective but for sore throats and coughs I personally don't see any benefit in using those sore throat lozenges or cough syrups because they only offer temporary relief but masking the irritation. Your throat will love the recipes that I'm about to show you because it actually helps to fix the problem.

Note these are really only designed for when you have a sore throat and or cough.

Ingredients:

Packet of dried almonds (as featured below)

Rock Sugar or normal sugar (best though if you use rock sugar)

Papayas or if they are not in season try nashi pears which are peel and cut in decent sized chunks/slices

Water

Steps:

1. Put all the ingredients stated above into a small pot
2. Boil it and let reduce
3. Take it off stove, and enjoy eating the papaya/pear with the sugar liquid

P.S There is not fixed quantity for the amount of water you use or the amount of sugar. You should make sure that you have enough water to cover all the ingredients + a little bit extra because you want it to reduce and be more concentrated. Also for the sugar, this is the one time that 'the more the better' applies.

Okay so the papaya trick is something that is pretty accessible right? Well for the next two, you might think I'm some mad woman that goes around picking strange leaves- call me Farmer Song!

So back when my grandma was in Australia and when I was sick, she would find these plants that were known to be good for curing the same sore throats and coughs. The problem though is that I have no idea what their name is or where you can even find them besides my own backyard. I just want to flag to you guys that these exist, don't be skeptical because I'm a living example of how effective they are (just picked the ones below today as well and that photo was taken 2 weeks ago). If you are also in Sydney and want to try these out for yourself then just pop me an email and I'll try my best to see if I can pass on one of these plants from my garden so you can grow them yourself.

Look out for these leaves, you want to pick the older ones because they are the most bitter and so are the most effective.

Steps:

1. Pick the said leaves above, you want a good handful
2. Wash them
3. Put them into a small pot and fill it up with water, this time enough to cover the leaves plus a lot more because the whole point is to reduce it so the water become incredibly concentrated and bitter
4. Boil and then remove from stove once the colour of the water become golden-brown but remember the more bitter the better so don't remove it too early if you notice that the colour is just golden.
5. Drink the water and discard the leaves

For this one follow the same steps as above but for a different plant this time and specific to this one is the use of the roots which are the most useful part. You can ignore the leaves, you want the roots or  you can also use both if you fancy.