Eat Those Onions!

Did you know that sulphur is in every cell in your body? I didn't, until this morning that is, when I was reading a Natural News article about it. It is one of those essential minerals, which do all the marvelous invisible things that contributes to your overall health.

Excerpt:
Sulfur is a mineral that is present in every cell of the body. It plays a key role in liver metabolism and the function of the joint cartilage and keratin of the skin & hair. It is also critical for metabolism and anti-oxidant defense systems that protect the aging patterns of the brain. Some of the healthiest cultures in the world have the highest levels of sulfur in their diet while the US has some of the lowest levels.
Industrial farming, that speciality of huge agribusinesses, depletes the soil of sulphur. Chances are, unless you are eating lots of a certain vegetable family, you may be sulphur-depleted.

And guess what vegetable family that is? Of course, the alliums! Onions, garlic, chives, leeks, shallots are all members of the allium family.

At our house, we eat garlic every day (or nearly every day--some days I forget until the Gruff Lord growls that he's being deprived of an essential health ingredient...). And I can't even imagine cooking without onions. I ran the dehydrator ragged last summer dehydrating onions, just to make sure we'd always have some around.

I have a wonderful cookbook, the Gilroy Garlic Festival Cookbook. If you think Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic is a bit garlicky, take a gander at this cookbook! All the recipes have lots of garlic: breads, soups, meat dishes and appetizers. All made with huge amounts of garlic. Here's one of my favorite recipes from the book:

Garlicky Tomato Saffron Soup
6 cans (10.5 oz. each) chicken broth (I use my homemade broth...)
1 cup boiling water
1/4 gram Spanish saffron threads
1 lb. Roma tomatoes, skinned, seeded and chopped in bits
1 bunch leeks (3 medium or 1 1/2 cups), white part only, well-cleaned
4 tablespoons virgin olive oil
5 large cloves fresh garlic
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
6 whole fennel seeds
8 large fresh spinach leaves

Place canned chicken broth in the freezer so the fat will rise to surface for easy removal. (Personally, I like a bit of chicken fat in my homemade broth so I skip this step.)
Bring water to boil. Add saffron threads and let steep, uncovered, off heat.
Skin tomatoes by putting them in boiling water for 1 minutes. Skin, seed and chop.
Chop leeks fine. Heat olive oil in soup pot over medium heat. Do not let oil smoke. Add chopped leeks and saute until limp but not brown. When leeks are limp, squeeze garlic cloves through press into the leeks and mix over medium heat for 2 minutes. Remove from heat.
Remove chicken broth from freezer and remove fat clumped at the top. Add chicken broth, saffron water including threads, tomatoes, thyme and fennel to leeks in soup pot.
Simmer mixture, partially covered, for 30 minutes. Five minutes before soup is ready, add spinach leaves.
Serve hot, room temperature, or cold with hearty, crusty bread. Makes 4 to 6 servings.

Sounds good, doesn't it? It's one of my favorite soups for when I feel like I'm coming down with a cold. Delicious and it will beef up your sulphur intake too.

Terrific Burn Medicine

This is an excerpt from Heinerman's Encyclopedia of Healing Herbs & Spices.

Terrific Burn Medicine

The February 1911 Bulletin of the History of Medicine (15: 143-49) contained a most informative article by medical historian Henry F. Sigerist entitled "Ambroise Pare's Onion Treatment of Burns." Pare was a famous French surgeon (1510-1590) who was looking for a simpler, easier and more effective remedy for burns than the standard cooling ointments of his day. He discovered it in a most remarkable way in Peidmont around 1537. At that time he was a young surgeon of 27 and was attached to the army of the Marshal de Montejan in the third war between Francis I and Charles V. ONe of the kitchen boys employed by this Marshal "fell by chance into a Caldron of Oyle being even almost boyling hot," Pare later recounted in his memoirs. The good doctor was immediately called on to attend to the poor lad's injuries. He quickly went to the local apothecaries "to fetch refrigerating medicines commonly used in this case," when he met "by chance a certaine old countrey woman, who ...perswaded mee...that I should lay to raw Onions beaten with a little salt" on the boy's injured skin. "Wherefore," he continued, "I thought good to try the force of her Medicine unpon this greasy scullion. I the next day found those places of his body whereto the Onions lay, to be free from blisters, but the other parts which they had not touched, to be all blistered."

And so came abouit Pare's famous onion dressing for all degrees of minor or serious burns. He soon had occasion to use it on some soldiers who were unfortunate enough to have some gunpowder explode in front of them, severely burning their hands and faces. In a mortar and pestle, Pare crushed slices of onion with a little salt and applied this dressing to part of their injuries and regular ointments to the other part. He recorded: "I observed the part dressed with the Onions quite free from blisters and excoriation, the other [covered only with ointments) being troubled by both..."

On more than one occasion have I recommended that freshly expressed onion juice be mixed with a pinch of salt and applied directly to even the worst burn and left overnight, with fantastic results the next day. This may be a folk remedy from the Middle Ages, but it was constantly tested by a competent doctor of the times and always proven to be effective. My own experience with the same thing through the years has only confirmed what Pare himself discovered and proved as valid therapy for burns.

End Excerpt.

Wow. I'm not at all anxious to get another burn, but I guarantee you that I'll definitely try this for myself! I can just imagine, post-crash, and someone gets badly burned and there's no medical help around. Burns can be very dangerous wounds and hard to handle. Onions and salt to the rescue? These simple kitchen items would at least be available to most folks, and just pounding up some onion slices with salt and applying the onion dressing to the burn is so easy a child could do it.

Keep this one in mind, folks. It could come in very handy. As with all folk remedies, try it yourself and see if it works. Sounds like it will.