About a month ago a friend shared with me a pickled lemon recipe which she was told by someone else that it is a natural remedy for cough and throat irritation.
I haven't suffered any cough for a long time, but boy, my throat does itch since it's pretty dusty in the high desert where I live. And often the dust from the hiking trails irritates my airway badly. So I decided to spend $5 and make a batch of pickled lemons myself. Fast forward to last week, one particular hike I took was especially dusty, I felt the phlegm (or throat mucus in America) building around my throat and my airway tightened. I came home, out of desperation I opened the jar and sliced up one pickled lemon. The taste reminded me of nutmeg - not the dried nutmeg, but the freshly picked nutmeg fruit.
Results? My airway cleared up almost immediately. Now I'm a true believer in this natural remedy and here's the recipe:
(a) Clean up a few glass jars, use only glass jars.
(b) Buy a bag of lemons - I highly recommend you get a bag of organic lemons since you will be eating the skins as well. After all, a bag of organic lemons from Whole Foods is only about $5, much less than a bottle of cough syrup.
(c) Wash the lemons and put them in a large bowl.
(d) Boil two pots of water.
(e) Pour one pot of boiling water into the bowl where the lemons are. Drain. And insert the lemons into the clean glass jars.
(f) Pour the other pot of boiling water into a large bowl to cool... when it's luke warm, pour salt (I use sea salt) while stirring with a spoon. The recipe that my friend gave didn't say how much salt, but while stirring it, I felt the "resistance" created by the salt water. I poured as much of salt till I thought the "resistance" was just right. Cool the water down completely.
(g) Pour the salt water into the glass jar. Tighten the cap. Write the production date on the jars. Leave them in a cool dark place.
(h) After a month, the lemons started to go soft and get smaller in size. You will notice that the top half of the top lemon will "float", not able to absorb the salt water, so you open the jar and squeeze the top the lemon down.
My friend said the longer you keep the lemons in the jar (like a few years), the better medicine they become.
I made three bottles the other day. One I gave to the friend who shared this recipe with me. I opened a small one the other day out of necessity, and one is still in the cabinet. As I said, it tasted more like nutmeg than lemon to me, and it sure did provide much relief for my throat.
Enjoy!
My friend TD and I did a mushroom hunt recently (before I got sick). We were looking for King Bolete in a mosquito-infested area when he spotted a Morel, a lone Morel standing proudly in the woods. We couldn't believe it! Morel? This time of the year? In an unlikely area? We were lucky. 
Have you looked at the skies recently? The sunsets have been incredible. And I was told that's due to a volcano eruption in Russia some days ago. This evening I stood outside looking at the skies and shot these pictures. Aw, the skies looked angry.
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