This morning I woke up with a tickling feeling in my nose and a few sneezes. I suspect a cold is trying to gain the upper hand (or respiratory tract, actually). That means it's time for one of the "how come I've never heard of this before" discoveries from my time here in Korea: honey ginger tea. I don't know if it actually makes my cold any shorter in duration or less intense but at least it's soothing. Especially when you're the kind of sick that's not sick enough to be in bed sleeping but too sick to be particularly effective at anything you do. It gives me that same sort of "just rest and this'll make you feel better" feeling that I used to get from my mom giving me room temperature ginger ale, slathering me with Vicks Vaporub and parking me in front of the TV talk shows for the day.
I'm hoping that when we get back to Montreal we'll be able to find these honey teas in an Asian grocery store. It's now one of those staple things, like a bottle of ketchup and a jar of Dijon mustard, that we just keep on hand because you never know when you'll want it. I suppose that if I can't find it at home, I could go back to chopping up some ginger or juice some lemons to make a tea. I hardly ever do it for myself since it always sounds like such a lot of effort when I'm under the weather. So much easier to just take a couple of spoonful from the jar, mix it with some hot water and snuggle up on the sofa to read a magazine or watch a video.
These honey teas also come in citron, Chinese quince or jujube at my corner shop.The Geezler prefers the lemony citron honey tea because she finds the ginger "too spicy!" A word of warning: there is going to be a sludge of pieces of peel or ginger at the bottom of your cup. If you're giving it to kids and you don't want to deal with complaints about "gunk" in the cup, you might want to strain it.
Off to have another cup of ginger tea and then maybe to think about Irish Soda Bread for St. Patrick's Day.
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