The other day I was in Target looking for bandaids (we’re almost out: I discovered this when I accidentally dropped the pointy end of the meat thermometer on my foot on Thanksgiving, a course of action that I strongly do not recommend) which meant that I went by the cold remedies aisle.

 

It was empty. Completely empty. Not so much as a single lozenge available. I have never seen an emptier cold remedies aisle. Tumbleweeds blowing down the middle.

 

My husband (who is an ER doctor) has been telling me that he’s seeing a lot of respiratory complaints. COVID is once ticking up, but RSV and the flu are also hitting seasonal peaks. Frankly, this sucks for everyone with lungs, which is most of us.

 

So if you or someone you care about is in a position where you catch something—whether it’s just a regular cold or something worse—and discover that the aisles near you are also cleaned out, this tea is my suggestion for the week.

 

Is this a substitute for Nyquil? Absolutely not. But it does help (me, at least) manage mild cough and sore throat symptoms. (You can get this for $5.29 on Amazon US.)

Soup at breakfast is actually very common in some countries in Asia, but it’s less so here in the US. Still, on days like today when there’s snow outside and it’s 16 degrees Fahrenheit in the morning, I love soup for breakfast.

 

One of my favorites is pozole. Pozole is a beautiful, brothy dark red soup where you add handfuls of vegetables (shredded cabbage, thinly sliced radish, onion, or pretty much anything you want), slice up avocado, garnish with cilantro, and add a squeeze of lime. It’s also the kind of soup that’s hard to make in two-person quantities, which means I always end up with a huge quantity of leftover soup.

 

So I fry eggs, toss them on top, and call it breakfast. If you’re interested, this is a good recipe for pozole. Even though this is bright red, if you take out the seeds and inside stems, this is not hot.

 

Note for vegans/vegetarians: There are recipes for vegan pinto pozole out there, but the ones I’ve seen don’t sound like something I want. One of them suggests putting the guajillo chilies in the broth and then taking them out at the end. 

 

This is a tea newsletter. Soaking chilies in hot water and then taking them out is how you make chili tea, not pozole.

 

If I was making this for vegans (and I probably will because a good friend of mine is vegan), I would work off the recipe I linked above, omit the pork and add pinto beans and maybe butternut squash and also an additional splash of olive oil to give it enough fat to have the right mouth feel.

Since our tea today is a cold remedy, I have to mention the remedy that shows up in Her Every Wish. Daisy’s mother is ill, and Daisy has longed to start her own business so that she can take care of her mother. She enters into a contest that will give a prize to the person with a best business plan, and then—when everyone laughs at the idea of a woman with a business—engages her ex, who goes by the name of Crash, to help her sound confident in order to win.

 

But that’s not the point of this. At some point in the book, Crash gets Daisy a carbolic smoke ball, which is a Fine Remedy for—you know what? I’ll let them tell you what it can cure.

Colds! Coughs! Ashthma! Headaches! Whooping cough! Hay fever! Influenza!

 

These all arise from one cause (OR DO THEY) and can therefore be cured by one remedy. 

 

If you’re wondering, the carbolic smoke ball was a ball where you would put carbolic acid (today, we’d call this phenol). You huff the acid, and then it makes your nose run. The carbolic smoke ball worked equally well on all of the above illnesses, which is to say that it did not help with any of them.

 

It’s not fair to say that it does nothing. Carbolic acid is poisonous, so let’s hear it for consumer protection laws.

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