Remedy I have used with my children, how to make it, and a yummy herbal treat.

One of the major reasons I started studying herbs was/is my children. I became wholly disgusted with taking them to the doctors' office every week or every other week. They always had ear infections, and were often sick. So my disgust started me on a search for a better option...

The first better option I started out looking for was how I could get rid of ear infections. I had some criteria, it had to be safe, effective (or at least more effective than the antibiotics the doctor kept prescribing),  within my capability of making, and it needed to be cheap to make. After much research I finally came up with a couple of things.

I must say, I was really nervous about trying this stuff on my girls. I don't know if I ever would have tried it if my youngest had not had one of those late night mommy-my-ear-hurts episodes. By that time I had read in a few places that a warm chamomile tea bag (damp but not dripping) placed on the affected ear would ease the pain enough to get through till a doctors' visit. (By the way, I was also out of childrens pain reliever and broke at the time, a true recipe for desperation.) So I tried it. I microwaved some water, stuck the tea bag in it, waited a bit, took it out and squeezed it till it didn't drip any more, had my little girl lay down on the couch and I put the tea bag on her ear...Just to clarify, ON her ear, NOT IN her ear. Do not put stuff in anyone's ear, it is a bad idea.  It worked, she and I both got some sleep and I was amazed.

That sparked further research and I came up with this recipe. This recipe has gone through some changes over the years, so this is how it started : Olive oil, mullien, and garlic.
Sounds really simple right? Well, yes and no. I got the ingredients, used an old spaghetti sauce jar that had gone through the dishwasher, put all the ingredients in and let it sit in a sunny window for roughly two weeks. (With the lid on tight) Then I strained the plant bits out through a coffee filter (took forever but worked great) and put the "clean oil" into a new sauce jar and had my next remedy to try on the children. This time I was a lot more confident about trying my remedy. Soon enough I had the opportunity to try my remedy. And it worked! It got rid of the ear infection completely! I was ecstatic, to say the least.

So, over time and with much more study I came up with this recipe. It is the one I use to this day, and it has worked on kids, husbands, and doggies. This is how it is made:

Ingredients-
Olive oil
Garlic cloves
Clove bud essential oil

Get a clean jar, either boil it or run it through a dishwasher with the heat dry on. Put your garlic cloves in the jar. If it is a small jar I would go with three-five cloves of garlic. Cover the cloves with the olive oil. Put in a sunny window and wait...After roughly two weeks have passed, strain the oil through a coffee filter into another jar prepared the same way as the first. Then add 10 DROPS of the clove essential oil to your freshly strained oil. Put your lid on, and swirl it around a bit to make sure the clove oil mixes in, and put in a cabinet to await use.  Also, you should date your mix and get rid of it after a year or if it gets funny looking. I will post more pictures of mine as it goes through its process.

There you go, it is a pretty simple recipe. But it saved me so many trips to the doctors office, I can't begin to express how glad I am to have it.

The jar of brown stuff is actually the beginning of a yummy treat. :) It is garlic cloves and Tamari. That is going to sit for a month, though it won't be in the window, I will move that in bit to a spot out of the sun. After the month is up, I will take out half of the Tamari (which I will save to use in food) and add in the same amount of honey as I took out of Tamari. It turns into a yummy treat, I could eat by the pound. lol But after I put the honey in it sits for another month. Long wait, delicious reward!

Heather