Cooking With Cloves Can Help Cure Your Flu

Cloves are indigenous to parts of East Africa, Indonesia, Pakistan, and India, where they have been known for their healing qualities for centuries. In ayurvedic medicine, cloves have been used to reduce inflammation, tooth decay, fevers, halitosis, and bad breath. Some practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine believe that the spice contains aphrodisiac properties too!

So the next time you get a cold and are looking for a more natural solution, incorporate cloves into your cooking. Cloves work especially well with Indian cuisine, of course, but you can also use the spice to great effect in other ways. One is to keep a bottle of clove oil next to the stove and cook with it regularly; to get the most health benefits from of the spice, heat about a quarter cup of cloves and infuse them into about two cups of grapeseed oil. You can also make a clove tea to relieve respiratory infections; the tea will help loosen the mucus in your chest making it easier to cough. Say goodbye to the pills and potions — now you can cook your way to a flu-free winter with cloves and some of these other cold-busting foods!