Last week when it came time for me to make a new batch of kimchi, I pulled the bok choy I’d bought earlier in the week out of the fridge and to my surprise found that I only had two heads of it. Usually I use three. I started making the batch and thought it was going to be too small. I was looking in the fridge to see if I had any Chinese cabbage to add to it when I found a bag of spinach. Spinach is green and leafy just like bok choy, I though. I convinced myself that padding my kimchi out with it could be just fine. Even as I added the spinach to the kimchi I had my doubts, but I soldiered on.

About a week later a terrible smell started coming from the fridge. It was the kimchi. I know you’re probably thinking that kimchi always stinks, but this was not the normal kimchi smell. When I opened the kimchi jar the smell jumped out and kicked me in the face. It was horrible. I tasted it and it tasted even more horrible then it smelled. I reluctantly gave it to my husband to eat and he did! He did say that it smelled and tasted funny though.

I took the kimchi out to try to make kimchi pancakes with it for lunch today and I just couldn’t. It smelled so terrible that I had to throw the whole batch away along with the jar it was in.

So my tip for the day is never use spinach to make kimchi.

I make this tasty broccoli salad all the time and I love it. I just thought I’d share the recipe with you today.

Ingredients

1 head broccoli
1 glove of garlic minced
1 tomato diced
8 Kalamata olives diced
1 green onion finely chopped
1/2 lemon
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/3 teaspoon dried basil
black pepper to taste

Cut up the head of broccoli finely. Mix all the chopped ingredients in a bowl. Squeeze in the juice of 1/2 lemon. Add the olive oil and spices and mix well. That’s it. Easy.

I love broccoli and I never thought about making a salad out of it until a few weeks ago. Now I make this all the time.

Just make an omelet like you normally would. Then put goat cheese in it. Follow that up with some ratatouille. Now fold that bad boy in half and slide it out of the pan.

This is the best leftover recipe I’ve ever had. Even if you weren’t planning on eating ratatouille any time soon I suggest you make it just so you can have this omelet the next day. Heck, you could even skip eating the plain ratatouille and just jump right to the omelet part. Click here for the ratatouille recipe I use.

Ingredients

• 1 teaspoon echinacea
• 1 teaspoon lemon balm
• 1 teaspoon peppermint
• 4 thin slices ginger root
• 2 thin slices lemon

I use a mid-sized sauce pan to make this tea. I don’t know how much water goes in it exactly but I’d say it’s enough to make about 4 mugs of tea. Fill the pan with water then add the ginger and the lemon. Bring that to a boil. Put your dried herbs into a teapot (one of those ceramic old school ones) and pour the boiling water into the pot over the herbs. Cover and let steep for 10 to 15 minutes. If you don’t have a teapot, no sweat, just use something else like another pot. Honestly, though I wish I had a teapot, I don’t so that’s what I do.  If you really have too because you need some sweetness in your life, add some honey. I usually skip that part.

Other Cold Remedies

The title of this posts says something about other natural cold remedies. I should have written remedy because I only have one to offer up and it’s going to sound really crazy to you, but it works. Garlic oil on the feet is a great remedy. Just peel and chop up a head of garlic roughly, put it in a container, and add enough olive oil to cover the garlic. Let this sit all day and at night put the garlicy oil all over your feet, put on some socks and go to bed.

I learned about this remedy from this herbal remedies site.