Headcold? Try French Onion Soup

My blessed daughter, fresh from yet another night on the tiles, forgot her toothbrush. She then shared with me the privilege of using my own. As a result I now have her head cold and not a little resentment! Apart from lots of raw garlic (yes I do stink but am unrepentant), fizzy Vitamin C tablets (more digestible - always take with food for better absorption) and my own magic herbal flu/cold formula, my own favourite traditional remedy is home-made French onion soup.

We've had a particularly good harvest of onions this year, despite the monsoon in July and although the stems rotted so they can't be hung on strings in the kitchen looking pretty, there are plenty of them sunbathing in serried ranks in our greenhouse. Make this soup yourself, if you are still standing, and inhale the gutsy aromas. This will disinfect your lungs, throat and nose very effectively and is also highly therapeutic and if your eyes and nose run - that's GREAT! They are being sluiced out by all those wonderful antiseptic aromas.

Recipe:

Take at least 8 good sized onions and dice finely. Sweat (now this is the secret of a good French onion soup) for 20 minutes - yes TWENTY! in some good olive oil. Don't use butter at this stage as it will burn. Keep the lid on so they get really soft and watch for the sugar caramelising. You want them to colour up but not burn. A little (but not a lot) of stickiness is perfect. Take the lid off occasionally and inhale - it will do you the power of good. When they are soft and golden and almost mushy, add as much garlic as you can spare - up to one bulb (yes BULB not CLOVE). Also add, preferably fresh but dried (in which case halve the quantity) will do, about 5 sage leaves, 10 marjoram leaves, 20 little thyme leaves. Swirl about briefly and then add about 1 and 1/2 litres of good stock. The French use beef, you could try chicken or vegetable or even yeast extract is nice too. Now bring to the boil (inhale again) and then simmer gently for about an hour. Serve (without the stringy cheese bit as dairy will NOT help your cold) with lots of fresh parsley and chunky granary bread.

A variation on this is my late lamented but very wise grandmother's cough recipe. She had 10 children and died at 98 so I have plenty of faith in her. She only gave up work in her 88th year. Put some onions in some brown sugar in the lowest setting of the range overnight. Mash up the gloup in the morning and bottle. The resulting syrup is an ideal cough medicine with enough syrup to coat the throat and plenty of antibacterial properties in the onions. The above soup recipe further adds the effectiveness of sage, thyme and marjoram to the garlic and onions and these are all strongly antibacterial and antiviral. Trust me - it works!