A while back Millie Garfield had a video on her blog "My Mom's Blog" which showed her preparing a "sure fire arthritis remedy". Gin Soaked Raisins. Since I have been having a problem, after I sit for any length of time, with walking and really bad stiffness and some pain , I decided to give Millie's remedy a try, thinking my problem might be arthritis.
I bought some golden raisins and a pint of Gordon's Gin. I put the raisins in a glass jar, just enough to cover the bottom of the jar. I poured in the gin. Just enough to cover the raisins and have about 2 inches of the gin over top of raisins. I shook the mixture and placed it in the refrigerator where it stayed for about a week until the raisins had plumped up and absorbed the gin.
In the meanwhile having the gin in the pantry and deciding that it smelled good and reading that gin is made from juniper berries, I thought, what the heck, I will take a tablespoon of the gin while I wait on the raisins to plump up. Hum, Not bad. Tastes like cough syrup. The next night I got out a small Waterford cordial glass, filled it with crushed ice and put in 2 tablespoons of the gin and sipped it. Not bad. And also the next night too, but added a lemon twist.
Meanwhile I researched the gin and raisins remedy on the internet and I came up with this information:
"Juniper Berries
Aunt Sophie came by a while ago with her secret remedy to vanquish arthritis. Aunt Sophie is, how can I best put it, of a certain age. This is a certain age that often has much in common with walkers, canes and wheel chairs; but Aunt Sophie is in great shape and is full of, as the expression goes, piss and vinegar, or, as I found, in her case, raisins and gin.“Have a few of these, every day,” was her command as she handed me a hand-packed container of her favourite concoction—raisins plumped to almost the size of grapes, redolent and swollen with Beefeater’s best. “Another bubbe-mayse,” I thought, as I munched some—a tale from the old country. But after a little research I decided this one might not be so far-fetched.The flavour of gin comes from juniper berries. These come from conifer plants, evergreens common in Europe and North America. New berries appear in the fall and can take two or three years to ripen. They are rich in vitamin C and terpenes, the essential oil which, in large quantities is manufactured into turpentine. During the Middle Ages the berries were kept in nosegays to help block the scent of the plague. For centuries, medicinal usage favoured using them in anti-inflammatory prescriptions. Hence, perhaps, Aunt Sophie’s arthritis remedy."
So here I am about 10 days later,(crossing my fingers for luck) feeling much better and able to sit awhile and then get up and walk without pain and stiffness.
Is it the gin and raisins.The gin. Or a combination including the 3 Advil a day I also started taking? Or is it just dumb luck?
All I know is, I hope it lasts.
Cheers, Millie
Monday, June 22, 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009
UH OH---
(this from our local paper. At least no one was living in it. But still.....what if you had gone shopping and came back to this.......
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thursday, June 11, 2009
"Al Byrd of Sandy Springs got a phone call Monday telling him that his family home in Carroll County had been torn down. The steps remain.The three bedroom house was on a little road bearing Al Byrd’s family’s name.
It’s where all 10 Byrd children grew up, where they gathered to pray, where they lined up youngest to oldest for Christmas gifts, where they recall dad dispensing life lessons from the front porch. It’s where neighbors would walk over to eat watermelons, peanuts and sweet potatoes, and rehearse for the choir.
Now, all that’s left of the house are those memories — and a pile of questions — after the Carroll County home was mistakenly reduced to rubble Monday afternoon.
“It’s incredulous,” said a still-shocked Byrd, a retired Xerox executive who lives in Atlanta. “It’s not about money. This is about family.”
The man who did the yard work at the home, which no one was living in, called Byrd late Monday with the news. Byrd immediately hopped on I-20 and called the Carroll County Sheriff’s Department. He turned onto Byrd Trail — named for his family — in disbelief. Even the mailbox was no longer standing..
“Why did you knock this house down?” Byrd said he asked members of a Marietta demolition company Tuesday morning.
Byrd said a representative of North Georgia Container told him the company was hired by another company, Southern Environmental Services, to raze the home. And that company was hired by Fore Star Property, according to the sheriff’s department report.
None of the three companies responded to messages left Thursday afternoon.
Byrd was told paperwork and GPS coordinates led the demolition crew to 11 Byrd Trail. He said no company ever contacted him before leveling the house.
“If we were going to get rid of it, we would have done it after my father died in 1998,” Byrd said.
He suspects a house on the opposite side of railroad tracks was the intended target of demolition. It’s a wooden home with a green roof รข€” substantially different than his three-bedroom family home.
Vernice Parham, who has lived on the street with two of her six sisters for more than 40 years, was home when the demolition began. “It hurt my heart,” she said. “I wasn’t raised up in it , but I was raised up near it,” Parham said. “I know we got a heavenly home. But we’ve got a Earthly home there.”
Byrd has hired a lawyer, but he isn’t sure what his next step will be yet. His only daughter is getting married on Saturday, and he doesn’t want to be distracted for the big event.
“I’m trying to compartmentalize this,” Byrd said Thursday afternoon. “I don’t want to put a pall on the wedding.”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thursday, June 11, 2009
"Al Byrd of Sandy Springs got a phone call Monday telling him that his family home in Carroll County had been torn down. The steps remain.The three bedroom house was on a little road bearing Al Byrd’s family’s name.
It’s where all 10 Byrd children grew up, where they gathered to pray, where they lined up youngest to oldest for Christmas gifts, where they recall dad dispensing life lessons from the front porch. It’s where neighbors would walk over to eat watermelons, peanuts and sweet potatoes, and rehearse for the choir.
Now, all that’s left of the house are those memories — and a pile of questions — after the Carroll County home was mistakenly reduced to rubble Monday afternoon.
“It’s incredulous,” said a still-shocked Byrd, a retired Xerox executive who lives in Atlanta. “It’s not about money. This is about family.”
The man who did the yard work at the home, which no one was living in, called Byrd late Monday with the news. Byrd immediately hopped on I-20 and called the Carroll County Sheriff’s Department. He turned onto Byrd Trail — named for his family — in disbelief. Even the mailbox was no longer standing..
“Why did you knock this house down?” Byrd said he asked members of a Marietta demolition company Tuesday morning.
Byrd said a representative of North Georgia Container told him the company was hired by another company, Southern Environmental Services, to raze the home. And that company was hired by Fore Star Property, according to the sheriff’s department report.
None of the three companies responded to messages left Thursday afternoon.
Byrd was told paperwork and GPS coordinates led the demolition crew to 11 Byrd Trail. He said no company ever contacted him before leveling the house.
“If we were going to get rid of it, we would have done it after my father died in 1998,” Byrd said.
He suspects a house on the opposite side of railroad tracks was the intended target of demolition. It’s a wooden home with a green roof รข€” substantially different than his three-bedroom family home.
Vernice Parham, who has lived on the street with two of her six sisters for more than 40 years, was home when the demolition began. “It hurt my heart,” she said. “I wasn’t raised up in it , but I was raised up near it,” Parham said. “I know we got a heavenly home. But we’ve got a Earthly home there.”
Byrd has hired a lawyer, but he isn’t sure what his next step will be yet. His only daughter is getting married on Saturday, and he doesn’t want to be distracted for the big event.
“I’m trying to compartmentalize this,” Byrd said Thursday afternoon. “I don’t want to put a pall on the wedding.”
Thursday, June 04, 2009
Possessions
Today as I was reading the New York Times I ran across an interesting question:If you had to leave your home in a big hurry what one item would you choose to save. Or stated another way, what one possession do you love most of all ?
As I thought about all the "stuff" we have accumulated in almost 58 years of marriage in over six different houses, I wondered what one thing is most precious to me.
Not any of the books or knickknacks. Paintings collected over the years. Jewelry. Computers. Furniture. Silverware. Etc etc. It is all just stuff.
The one thing I would grab on my way out in a hurry would be:
The small, black and white photograph of my mother that sits in a silver frame on a bookshelf in my living room. It is a formal studio portrait type popular back then. She sits in a decorative wooden chair. There is a painted landscape background. She is pictured in a white dress, white stockings, her dark hair pulled back in a bun. Her own mother, a farmer's wife but an accomplished seamstress, made this dress with fine tucks adorning the bodice.
The date of the photograph would be about 1915 or so. At this time my mother would have been about 22 years old and teaching school in a one room schoolhouse in rural Georgia near Madison, Georgia. She was single, having not yet met her future husband, my father.
Many times since she died at age 91, I touched this photograph and blew her a kiss saying "Goodnight Mother"
I wish I had just an hour or two to sit down with her again and tell her I understand so much of what she went through as she aged. Now that I am approaching age 80, I better understand the aches and pains; the joys and trails of enduring to old age she talked about back then.
What would you choose to save. What one material possession do you love most?
As I thought about all the "stuff" we have accumulated in almost 58 years of marriage in over six different houses, I wondered what one thing is most precious to me.
Not any of the books or knickknacks. Paintings collected over the years. Jewelry. Computers. Furniture. Silverware. Etc etc. It is all just stuff.
The one thing I would grab on my way out in a hurry would be:
The small, black and white photograph of my mother that sits in a silver frame on a bookshelf in my living room. It is a formal studio portrait type popular back then. She sits in a decorative wooden chair. There is a painted landscape background. She is pictured in a white dress, white stockings, her dark hair pulled back in a bun. Her own mother, a farmer's wife but an accomplished seamstress, made this dress with fine tucks adorning the bodice.
The date of the photograph would be about 1915 or so. At this time my mother would have been about 22 years old and teaching school in a one room schoolhouse in rural Georgia near Madison, Georgia. She was single, having not yet met her future husband, my father.
Many times since she died at age 91, I touched this photograph and blew her a kiss saying "Goodnight Mother"
I wish I had just an hour or two to sit down with her again and tell her I understand so much of what she went through as she aged. Now that I am approaching age 80, I better understand the aches and pains; the joys and trails of enduring to old age she talked about back then.
What would you choose to save. What one material possession do you love most?
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