Ginger Rehab

You know you're cooked when you get that little tickle in your throat. Too late for the echinacea, too late for the Vitamin C. You just gotta stock up on the tea & cough drops and hope your schedule allows for a day or more resting at home. Mine didn't this time around. I had a 3-day retreat that I'd planned for my department in Albany, New York and a big party at home that Saturday night--neither of which I could cancel. Unfortunate, because in my experience, if you try to work through sickness with medication (my preferred coping meds are a steady stream of DayQuil and NyQuil), you're just staving off symptoms and your cold lasts longer. And that is, indeed, what happened.

What made this cold a tiny bit more bearable was the fresh ginger I picked up at the Albany food co-op. I'd never seen it before, and the co-op workers told me they wouldn't have it for long. I bought enough to do three things: make some ginger-tofu stir fry, stick one of the little root ends in water to see if it would grow, and cut little slivers into throat-coat tea all week. Delicious.