All things GINGER

Being pregnant I've recently been reminded of the dire need to have Ginger coursing through my veins at all times. Luckily my family has always had a fresh ginger root on hand at all times. When I was little my mom and dad would give me ginger ale for tummy aches and nausea. Hell, even with BABIES no matter how young if you throw a little ginger tea into a bottle or their food say goodbye to most colic symptoms, fussiness, constipation, diarrhea, throwing up, and crankiness from tummy aches (Which is you have kids you know SUPER sucks more than anything in the world.) Ginger saved my life from a toddler well into my own children being toddlers. When I'm old you can bet your buck my husband and I will be doing that as the ultimate sign that we want to ease each others pain.

Well into adulthood its just common place to make someone ginger tea if they are feeling any sort of internal pains, but I realized recently that not everyone know of this amazing trick.

So if you read all of that you must be like "HELL YEAH, WOOO HIGH FIVES FOR GINGER..." or you're like, "Do I need to Google this? what is this amazing fuss all about?"

Sets start at the beginning. Since the beginning of human culture societies have been using it to aid in digestion. Religious people out there will be happy to know that Mary was having Jesus Christ sip up some ginger tea when his tummy hurt. Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Ancient India, China, Russia, and ancient every culture ever have been using it this way.

SO Now to SCIENCE. Ginger has chemicals in it that reduce inflammation, relax intestinal lining, Ginger's root contains chemicals called gingerols and shogaols. (Thats right, its so awesome they named the acting chemicals after the plant itself.) These things do all of the awesome things I've already told you about! It helps everyone from Chemo-Radiation Patients to New borns with colic. SO when you get pregnant make sure its on you at all time. Not a joke, its a great emergency maker-better!


SO what can we do to make our lives easier with this ginger stuff? did you know even if you hate the taste of the stuff you can reap the benefits? you dont even have to ingest it. Those beautiful little chemical buddies that have just become your best friends can just be put ON the skin. BOOM. Mind blown?
The est way to do this is with Ginger oil. We make it all of the time since we have babies in the house.

Ginger Tea
You really just grate up some ginger, put it in a loose tea holder, then put it in oiling water.

Ginger Oil
Take some ginger root, cut or grate it up into small pieces. For pretty potent stuff put the ginger in some oil (any oil of your choice. I use Olive) so that it is covered in a crock pot and cook as low as possible for about 24 hours, making sure not to let it boil. After its cool store it at rom temp, preferably in a dark glass receptacle. It lasts longer that way.

Ginger Candy
Like CANDY a lot? Make your medicine into candy. Im absolutely in love with Alton Brown, so go HERE to check out his PERFECTO recipe.

(left) Candy and (right) Syrup for Ginger ale

Ginger Ale
Ingredients: 2 cups (about 10 ounces) coarsely chopped, peeled fresh ginger 3 strips lemon peel (about 4 inches each), yellow part only 1-1/2 cups (about) sugar 3 quarts chilled club soda Ice cubes

Preparation: Place ginger, lemon peel, and 4 cups of water in a 4-quart saucepan. Bring to a boil over high heat. Simmer at a low boil, uncovered, for about 10 minutes. Add sugar, stirring constantly, and continue to boil until reduced to about 3 cups, another 15 minutes.

Place a fine wire strainer over a large bowl. Pour in ginger mixture to separate solids from liquid. Discard the lemon peel. The strained cooked  pieces may be reserved for other uses (good with vanilla ice cream or yogurt), if desired.

Cool the syrup, pour into a glass container, seal tightly, and chill at least 1 hour until cold or up to 1 week.

For each 16-ounce serving, mix 1/4 cup ginger syrup with 1 cup cold club soda and pour over ice. Additional ginger syrup and/or sugar may be added to taste.

Yield: about 4 quarts, 12 servings


Voila! You really don't need a lot. A tiny bit goes a long long way!


Tell us your Ginger success stories in the comments, and don't forget to follow us!

Poisoning your body from the outside

Think of your skin as 1,000,000,000 tiny mouths. It absorbs everything you put on it. Just as the food that we eat nourishes us so does the food our skin eats. Actually, 1 of the best ways to feed our bodies your skin. it is your largest organ. 
Unfortunately, most of the things that we put on our skin is actually poisoning us, and most of the things that are sold to us aren't for our best interest.
Take baby oil for instance. baby oil is actually made out of mineral oil which is a byproduct from the process of making gasoline. Essentially, they had a lot of extra things left over and decided to try and make money off of it by having you put it on your skin - or in this case your newborn baby. It is extremely toxic!! even the FDA has labeled it as a toxic substance.
-Or margarine. Margarine was created to keep flies off of things, but they discover they could beat it to people and make extra profit. margarine does not mold and flies will not go near it try leaving some margarine out.. its not consumable!! it's on the FDA's list of suspected carcinogens, and may also use the term "paraffin." (I know margarine isn't thought of as something you put in your skin, but it can go by many different names and be used in a lot of the cosmetics you use. Things they put in food and things they want you to put on your skin are interchanged often.. only the same chemical is given a different name.)

You should never put anything in your body or on your skin unless you recognize every word in the ingredients. before I go any further I must also comments on "natural flavors." If they were natural why wouldn't they list them? This is just a way for manufacturers to get around listing things they don't want you to know about. don't ever buy anything with natural flavors especially especially if you're a vegetarian. they are usually made from insect or animal by products.

Here's a list of some popular ones to avoid!

• Strawberry, Vanilla, and Raspberry flavoring/scent: Made from Castoreum. (the yellowish secretion of the castor sac which is, in combination with the beaver's urine, used during scent marking of territory. Both male and female beavers possess a pair of castor sacs and a pair of anal glands located in two cavities under the skin between the pelvis and the base of the tail.)
• Red dye is made from Carmine is a red food-coloring that comes from boiled cochineal bugs, which are a type of beetle. 
• If something has the word fragrance listed this can indicate the presence of up to 4000 different unlisted ingredients.
• Phenols- A caustic, poisonous, white crystalline compound, Derived from benzene and used in resins, plastics, and pharmaceuticals and in dilute form as a disinfectant and antiseptic. Also calle carbolic acid
• Peg-8 or polyethylene glycol - Tested heavily in animal. Can destroy renal glands In dogs, after they "sacrifice" them they found that dogs treated with this had cloudy, swollen, and disrupted kidneys.
• Polysorbate - not only is this used as an emulsifier in cosmetics, a mixing agent in food (like ice cream), but its used in vaccines as a stabalizer. According to the MSDS sheet at Science lab.com, section 11: Toxicological Information, it was tested for inhalation and ingestion and was shown to be slightly hazardous on skin contact, ingestion and inhalation. however these are minor compared to other potential side effects of it's use especially in an intravenous or immunologic setting. In the same section of toxicological information it states that it may cause reproductive effects, it may cause cancer, and may be a mutagenic, (change the genetics
• Detergents - inscreases skins PH balance and irritates the "acid mantle" of your skin. This allows for bacteria to enter the body
• Chemical dyes - There are so many, made from so much that its hard to pin down exactly what its doing to your body, but see above for RED DYE as a vague example.
• Surfactants - a type of detergent (see above) usually made from petroleum or synthetic polymers (2 words for POISON).  Foaming agents, emulsifiers, and dispersants are surfactants which suspend respectively, a gas, an immiscible liquid, or a solid in water or some other liquid.
• Preservatives - A wide range of things that over time can break down cell walls and literally turn arteries into plastic over a long period of time.
• Sodium laurel sulfate - anything that suds up most likely has this. It strips all good and bad oils from.the skin allowing bacteria (and acne) to get worse. It is used in animal testing to PROMOTE inflammation.
• Carbon monoxide is injected into plastic wrap after all the air is sucked out to block the process of oxidation that can turn pink meat brown. 
• Ammonia is a strong smelling chemical found in household cleaning products, but it’s also used as gas to kill germs in low-grade fatty beef trimmings.