Recipes for Viral Support

Lucinda Warner’s basic stock recipe 

1 pack Shitake mushrooms
Veggie peelings and leftovers such as carrot, squash, leek
Turmeric finely sliced root or powdered
Black pepper
Garlic
Ginger
Chilli
Greens such as cabbage or kale
1 tablespoon coconut oil
Enough water to cover and for all the ingredients to move around freely.

Additional herbs that can be included in this preparation if you have access to them include: Medicinal mushrooms such as birch polypore, turkey tail, ganoderma and chaga; Astragalus root; berries such as elderberries, rosehips or hawthorns.
Once the stock is done and strained freeze in ice cube trays then add one to cooking or to a cup of hot water to drink a couple of times a day.

Susun Weed’s Immune Strengthening Soups “Cooking herbs and vegetables together for a long time extracts minerals, activates immune-strengthening phytochemicals, and increases the levels of available antioxidants. Raw foods weaken and stress the immune system.

To make an immune strengthening soup:
Chop at least half an onion per person and saute in olive oil until translucent..
Add at least two cloves of garlic, sliced or chopped, per person and saute for a minute.
Add two or more cups of water or vegetable broth per person.
Add one cup per person of chopped seasonal vegetables such as: carrots, cabbage, celery, corn, burdock, turnips, potatoes, tomatoes, parsnips.

(If using canned soup, begin here.)
Add one small handful of seaweed per person.
Add one ounce fresh, or one-half ounce dried mushrooms -- any kind -- per person.
Add one-quarter ounce dried tonic roots per person.
Add generous amounts of antioxidant seasoning herbs and some sea salt.
Bring to a boil; simmer for an hour.
Turn off heat and let your soup mellow in a cool place overnight.
Serve it the next day, heated up, with freshly-baked bread and organic raw milk cheese.

Seaweeds build powerful immunity. Kombu and wakame are excellent in soups. Cut them small; they swell to 5-7 times their dried size when cooked.

All mushrooms strengthen the immune system. Dried shitake are available and inexpensive at Chinese grocery stores. Reishii, maitake, and other medicinal mushrooms are delicious, as are the more common button mushrooms, portobellos, and dried porcinni.

Tonic roots help our livers, lymph, and kidneys work well, protecting us from infection. I often put these tough roots into a jelly bag and drop that into the soup so I can fish it out before serving. I use one or more of these, fresh or dried, depending on what I have available:
Siberian ginseng
Astragalus
Burdock
Dandelion
Chicory
Yellow dock
American ginseng.

Seasoning herbs from the mint family -- rosemary, thyme, oregano, basil, marjoram, and sage -- are loaded with antioxidants. I don't just season the soup with them, I add them by the handful for the greatest impact on my immune strength.”

Bone broth
Several large bones (Lamb, beef, goat, chicken carcass)
4 stalks of celery
1 large onion
1-2 leeks
1 handful thyme
1 sprig sage
6 stalks from fresh burdock leaves
1-2 dried bay leaves
½ a head of garlic, peeled and chopped or crushed and left for ½ hour before cooking
6 peppercorns
2 tblsps cider vinegar (preferably infused with mineral rich herbs)
Wash and chop vegetables. Place everything in a large, heavy bottomed saucepan. Cover with water and simmer for five - seven hours. Remove bones, herbs and spices. Liquidise broth with onions, celery, burdock and leeks. Strain through a fine sieve to remove any bits. Serve in a mug or freeze in suitable portion sizes or use as the basis of a nourishing soup by adding fresh or dried nettles and vegetables and/or mushrooms of choice.

Whole chicken soup 1 small chicken 3 bay leaves sprigs of thyme and a few sage leaves 2 tablespoons infused cider vinegar for added minerals (usually mugwort, motherwort, red clover or violet) 1 large scoop of homemade green powder (ground elder, lovage, nettles, marjoram etc) 1 onion sliced 2 celery sticks, chopped 3-4 cloves of garlic peeled and crushed and left for 15 minutes to activate Place all the ingredients into a large saucepan (Mine holds 10 UK pints). Add 8-9UK pints of water. Bring to the boil and simmer on the lowest heat for up to five hours. It's easier to handle if you leave it to cool for a while if possible before straining. Meat from chicken carcass 2/3 celery sticks, thinly sliced 1 onion, peeled and diced 2/3 carrots 2/3 peeled potatoes chopped parsley chicken stock Strain chicken stock. Discard bones and skin and cooked veg. Clean saucepan.  Saute onion and celery in a small amount of olive oil and butter until soft. Add  vegetables, parsley and chicken stock. Bring to boil and simmer until vegetables are soft.  Add chicken meat and bring to boil for several minutes. Blend soup until smooth.  Season to taste. Freezes well. Fish chowder (this recipe is from a 1970s Good Housekeeping Book) 1 onion peeled and diced 2 slices of bacon diced 3/4 lb fish (I used one fillet of smoked haddock) skinned and chopped into 1"pieces 3/4 pint(UK) fish stock (I made mine from boiling the fish skin in water for 20 mins.) 1 tin of tomatoes, blended or sieved 3 medium potatoes peeled and diced chopped parsley (they used it to garnish but I cooked mine) Saute bacon and onion in a little butter until soft. Add diced potatoes and parsley, blended tomatoes plus fish stock. Bring to the boil and simmer until potatoes are  soft. (Usually 15 minutes) Add fish 5-10 minutes before end of cooking time so it is  just cooked and doesn't go hard. Season to taste.

Home made medicines

Rosalee de la Foret’s Astragalus Immune-Support Tea

Dried astragalus (or small handful of sliced roots) (Astragalus propinquus)

10 grams dried oatstraw (1/3 cup finely sifed) (Avena sativa)

10 grams dried de-seeded rosehips (1 tablespoon) (Rosa spp.)

10 grams dried roasted dandelion root (1 tablespoon) (Taraxacum officinale)

3 grams dried cinnamon chips or one stick broken into pieces (Cinnamomum spp.)

4 cups water 1 cup apple juice

Place the herbs and water into a medium-sized sauce pan. Bring to a boil then reduce the heat and simmer for 30 minutes, covered. Turn off the heat and add the apple juice. Let stand five minutes. Strain. Drink warm or cold as desired. (I prefer warm!) Drink within 48 hours.

Makes: 4 cups 15 grams

Classic Cold Tea

Use 1tsp each of dried peppermint, yarrow and elderflower (1tblsp if fresh)

Pour 1/2-1pt boiling water into a teapot of cafetiere and steep for ten minutes. Strain and drink every half hour. Sweeten to taste. If you don’t like the taste of peppermint you can use other herbs such as New England Aster, or bergamot. If you only have a herb in tincture form, add the tincture either 1 tsp or in drop dosage to the hot infusion.

Ginger and Lemon Tea

Grate or finely chop 1inch root ginger without peeling. Place in cafetiere or teapot and fill with just boiling water. Infuse for ten minutes. Squeeze the juice from half a lemon and place in a cup or mug. Pour the strained ginger tea over the lemon juice and add honey to taste. For an anti-viral chesty tea, add 1tsp dried thyme and 1tsp dried sage to the grated ginger root. Infuse together and pour over lemon juice and honey.

Elderflower

Make elderflower tea and serve hot. Elderflower is a diaphoretic which will make you sweat and kill the virus. This is especially useful for children.

If you have a fever which won’t break, give vervain tincture – half a tsp or 30 drops.

Elderflower and Yarrow is a good combination for fever and anti-inflammatory

Fever pain remedies

Boneset tea or 1 tsp boneset tincture is also useful remedy for bone-aching fevers.

Crampbark tincture – 1tsp 3x a day or every 2-3 hours if very bad. Works with kidney pain and any cramping pain

Chamomile tea – relaxes all smooth muscles. Drink half an hour before bed or when sleep is required.

Wood betony for headaches, especially headaches caused by inflammation of brain tissue e.g acquired brain injury or meningitis. 1tsp tincture in a shot glass of water. Sip.

Coughs

Before deciding what herb to use, you must be sure what kind of cough you are dealing with.

Dry, irritable coughs: cherry bark, ginger

Cold, hacking coughs: angelica, fennel seed, fenugreek seed, New England Aster

Wet, green, mucous laden coughs: elecampane root (especially good for children and people who suffer with asthma) This can be made into a tea, added to syrup or use a tincture. Very good for bringing up mucous

Deep seated infected chest infections: mullein (make sure to strain tea or decoction thoroughly so tiny hairs from leaf don’t irritate throat tissue)

Ordinary coughs: sage & thyme, white horehound/hyssop/marshmallow leaf or root.

To sooth lung tissue irritated by coughing add plantain leaves and/or marshmallow leaves or roots.

Cough Syrup

(recipe from Non Shaw and Christopher Hedley's Herbal Remedies)

1 l (2 pints) water

40 g (1 1/2 oz) dried herb or 100 g  (4oz) fresh chopped herb

450 g (1 lb) sugar

Put herb in water, bring to a boil, let simmer 20-30 minutes, strain.

Clean out pan, pour liquid back into it, let sit on minimum heat until

you only have 2 dl (7 fl.oz) left Add sugar, simmer until sugar has dissolved, pour into jars, label. (This takes time. 1 fluid ounce evaporates about every hour.)

A children’s cough syrup can be made from onions or elderberry and Echinacea in equal parts. For a straightforward cough syrup use 2 parts peppermint, 1 part hyssop, 1/2 part thyme, 1/2 part horehound. For cough syrup which can also be used as a drink, use hyssop, thyme, elecampagne, white horehound, lemon balm and root ginger.

N.B. Do not use peppermint with children under 2 years. Honey can be used as a substitute for sugar, but do not use with children under 1 year.

Dose: 1 dessertspoon as and when or make a drink with 1 tblsp and sip.

For blocked sinuses

Thyme can useful but horseradish is very effective!

Golden rod and elderflower as a tea or tincture

Jim Macdonald has a very useful article on dealing with sinusitis 

Fire Cider Vinegar

Equal portions of horseradish and ginger root – grate or whizz in a coffee grinder. (It is your choice whether you peel the roots or not.)

1 head of garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped

1 good handful of rosehips (fresh or dried)

6 cloves

2 tsps paprika

2tsps turmeric

2 tsps cayenne pepper

(If you have access to fresh chilli peppers, you can add these as well, leaving the seeds in to give extra “fire”!)

Mix all dry ingredients together in a large glass jar so it is filled about half full, then add cider vinegar stirring well to remove air bubbles until the jar is full. Place cling film over the top of the jar before sealing with screw top lid. Label and date. Place jar in warm, dark place for 3 weeks. Strain and use.

Fire cider vinegar can be drunk with honey and boiling water (about 2tsps of each to a mug of boiling water) or on its own in a little water. It can also be used in salad dressings.

Horseradish Honey

Grate up two roots of horseradish and add to 3/4lb runny honey. Place in glass jar with screw top lid and leave to infuse for several weeks.