Looking for a natural way to soothe a sunburn, quell a cough or even knock out a migraine? “Grow Your Own Drugs” has the plant for the job! Author James Wong distills the knowledge of herbal practitioners with the most up-to-date scientific findings on herbal medicine to provide reliable information about plants, flowers, fruits, roots and the host of natural remedies you can make from them. You don’t need a state-of-the-art laboratory or a stock of exotic plants — just a kitchen stove, a few minutes, and ingredients as common as the fresh foods on your counter. COVER: READER’S DIGEST

Get ready for amazing smells, colors and flavors as you cook up your own fruit-tastic natural remedies. FOTOLIA

The following is an excerpt from Grow Your Own Drugs by James Wong (Reader’s Digest, 2009). Packed with elegant photographs, this lively, practical guide will shift your focus from seeing plants as just a pretty backdrop to life to seeing them as solutions in life. Wong includes instructions for concocting all types of herbal remedies — infusions, tinctures, salves, decoctions — along with an index of the top 100 medicinal plants and more than 100 recipes that unleash the power of plants to treat everyday ailments.

(For your convenience, we’ve converted all ingredients from British to American measurements. — MOTHER)

Cherry Cough Syrup Recipe

Honey is the magic ingredient in this soothing syrup, but the cherries and lemon add a zingy punch of vitamin C.

Ingredients:

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3-3/4 cups cherries (leave the pits in)

1 lemon, sliced

1 cup honey

Instructions:

Place all ingredients in a pan with enough water to cover. Simmer gently for about 30 minutes, or until the cherries are soft. Remove from the heat and strain out the solids, then allow to cool. Pour into a sterilized bottle. Take 2 tablespoons, as required, to soothe coughing. Keeps for several days in the refrigerator.

Cranberry and Apple Crush Recipe

Cranberry (Vaccinium macrocarpon) is a sharp, sour fruit grown mostly in wet meadows in North America. Although perhaps best known as an accompaniment to Christmas dinner, it has a long history of treating cystitis and other urinary tract infections. It is thought to work by preventing bacteria from sticking to the lining of the urinary tract and increasing the acidity of urine. If you suffer recurrent bouts of cystitis, regularly drinking homemade cranberry juice can help prevent further outbreaks (commercial juices are usually high in sugar). Cranberry is also used to help relieve the symptoms of acute attacks of cystitis, but you check with your family doctor first to make sure it is cystitis and nothing more serious.



Ingredients: