Inge Leonora-den Ouden

I downloaded this book (a few years ago) and started reading it.
After finding out I do not need anything more than boiling hot water for cleaning away fat residues and lemon (or lime) peels for cleaning the sink and the taps ... I did not need anything more. Only some 'elbow grease' to get both my kitchen and my bathroom clean (or anyway: what I consider clean enough).

I experimented for some time with home-made laundry soap (solution of olive-oil-soap and soda in water). But that did not wash my laundry as clean as I wanted. Then I tried the 'soap nuts', but they did not wash clean enough either. So I returned to store-bought 'eco' laundry wash powder.

A few years ago I wrote a comment here and I said I wanted to make a tea cosy. Since then I really made a tea cosy. Only I did not make it in patchwork, but I knitted it.

Julia Winter wrote:I really like the garlic mullein oil for ears.  Oil is an excellent thing to put in an unhappy ear because it works in harmony with our ears' natural cleaning system.

The ears produce cerumen (ear wax) deep inside, near the eardrum.  This wax coats the inside of the ear and waterproofs it.  The movement of the jaw, with chewing and talking, will help the ear wax move along the ear canal out to the pinnae (the outer ear) where you can get it with your finger.  This is the design.  I don't recommend q-tips, or at least if you must make sure you are very careful because it's easy to shove cerumen deeper into the ear canal and make things worse.

Oil will help soften the cerumen so it can do its job, and resume moving towards the exit.  Sometimes a person has a major ball of wax in their ear, and then irrigation with warm water will often get it to come out.  I won't do irrigation on someone with a particularly painful ear, because duh, it hurts and also they might maybe have a ruptured ear drum and you don't want to squirt water at that.  If you put oil in your ear I recommend warming it up.  Putting the little bottle in a bowl of hot water works, carrying it in your front pocket also works, albeit more slowly.  

Some people, especially those of Asian descent, don't have sticky cerumen, they have dry flaky cerumen.  Oil is helpful for this sort of cerumen as well.

Rubbing alcohol is useful for drying out the ear - it displaces water and it dries easily.  Acid is helpful for preventing infections in the ear.  If a person is prone to swimmer's ear, they can instill drops made with half vinegar and half rubbing alcohol after getting the ears full of water (swimming, etc).  You do NOT want to use these drops to treat an ongoing otitis externa (infection in the ear canal) because it will HURT.  They are good for prevention.

If I have a patient who has trouble with their ear more than once, I recommend instilling sweet oil or garlic mullein oil into each ear canal weekly.  Let it really soak in, so you can only do one side at a time.

My right ear is more sensitive than the left ear. As a child I once had a major ear infection and then the right ear drum was damaged. Many years later a doctor confirmed that there was still a cicatrice.
When it's cold and I ride my bicycle I have to take care that my ears don't get cold, especially that right ear. But sometimes I can not prevent the cold and then the ear starts hurting.
BTW there's not a problem with ear wax, it is only hurting inside.

My remedy is: take a little ball of raw sheeps wool (with lanolin still in it) and put that in the ear. If I can not get wool with lanolin in it I take some fluffy threads of wool yarn and put a drop of olive oil on it, to put that in my ear. I keep the wool ball in my ear for as long as I feel it is needed. If that's more than one day I renew it (fresh wool, fresh oil).

Now I read here about garlic and mullein I will start making garlic oil (I think that's like calendula oil, but then with a clove of garlic instead of the flowers, isn't it?). And as soon as new mullein leaves are growing I will take some of those to make an infused oil of them too.

Thanks for the useful information.

Wow! Who would have thought that split peas could sprout?! Not me.
But you don't know until you have tried. I see here some who tried and succeeded. When these are 'permies' I trust them (more than google, youtube, etc.).

Now I want to try myself. Split peas are the easiest to get here, because they are the ingredient for the famous Dutch 'snert' (or 'erwtensoep', meaning 'pea soup').

Anne Miller wrote:It might make sense to explain what PMS is so here is what Google said:

Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) is a group of physical and emotional symptoms that occur before a menstrual period. Symptoms can include breast tenderness, mood swings, and food cravings

Thank you Anne. Originally I wrote a post in the thread on menopause, where PMS was already mentioned. Because it was late, bed-time, I didn't think of writing more in the new thread.

Christopher Weeks wrote:
Actually, I found (somewhere on the internet a decade or two ago) that whole oats are called groats and I picked up the habit of calling them that to distinguish between the steel-cut oats that my wife likes and the whole oats that I like. (I'm willing to change what I call them if that's not normal for English.)

This is how we keep them in the pantry:

Aha! I call those 'whole grains'. The word 'groats' ('grutten' in Dutch) I use for broken grains, probably also called 'steel cut' in English. But as I find out here, not all English-speaking people always use the same words. Maybe it depends on where they live (UK, Ireland, USA, different states). Or maybe they heard others use a word and they took over. My English words I learned at school (in the Netherlands) or I read them on the internet and in books.

Tereza Okava wrote:

Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote:

Christopher Weeks wrote:When Trace writes "oatmeal" and everyone else writes "oats", in all cases are you talking about rolled oats?

I make oat groats for breakfast sometimes but haven't ever enjoyed rolled oats.

I never saw oat groats. I only know groats made of buckwheat, and they're rare to find (only in the good-food stores sometimes).

I believe when he is saying "groats" he means the unrolled oats, sometimes called steel cut or Irish oats. they're usually broken in half, but they're not flat. They take a bit longer to cook and can be a bit like kasha, buckwheat, etc- nutty and chewy.

Yes, what I consider 'groats' ('grutten' in Dutch) is not rolled but broken (steel cut). But here I never saw groats made of oat (Avena sativa), only of buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum). Whole grains (not cut, rolled or anything) are sold in the good-food stores to, all species (oats, wheat, barley, rye, and buckwheat too) are available, but not in all stores. In larger stores in the cities there's more choice than in the small town where I live. Maybe there they have oat groats too ...

Christopher Weeks wrote:When Trace writes "oatmeal" and everyone else writes "oats", in all cases are you talking about rolled oats?

I make oat groats for breakfast sometimes but haven't ever enjoyed rolled oats.

I never saw oat groats. I only know groats made of buckwheat, and they're rare to find (only in the good-food stores sometimes).

Christopher Weeks wrote:When Trace writes "oatmeal" and everyone else writes "oats", in all cases are you talking about rolled oats?

I make oat groats for breakfast sometimes but haven't ever enjoyed rolled oats.

Sometimes the English language has strange words. "Oatmeal" is one of them. As far as I know this isn't a 'meal', but fine flakes. I think 'rolled oats' is not exactly the same, maybe those are the larger flakes, whole grains made flat between rollers.
My own language, Dutch, has many more strange words ... But for those 'oats' it is clear: there is 'havermout' (oatmeal) and there are 'havervlokken' (rolled oats). And of course there is 'haver' (oat), that's the name of this grain species, both the plant and the whole grains. And there is 'havermoutpap', porridge made of oatmeal, cooked in milk (with sugar).