Golden Milk

There is a thin and permeable line between cooking for health and cooking for pleasure.

There is a massive overlap between eating well and feeling well.

Lately my little kitchen experiments have started to spill out of the sustenance realm and into the realm of medicine and healing.

Homemade cough medicine!  Body butters and salves!  St. John's wort steeping in oil on the windowsill, turning it red.

This is the kind of fun I've been having.

This little wonder straddles that line between food and medicine, between health and pleasure.

I'd seen recipes for golden milk on blogs before, mainly from Indian cooks.  It is supposed to bring warmth and vitality, restore emotional balance, and work against inflammation of all kinds.

Warm and sweet and spicy and soothing.

It helps that I won a whole pound of high-class turmeric on the internet a few months ago.

Winning is awesome!

What am I going to do with all of this turmeric??

Maybe this.

I'm from a long line of auto-immune afflicted folks with various manifestations of it.  Mine is the skin rash, eczema.  It comes and goes, but mostly just stays.

I have tried everything over the years and have little hope for a cure any time soon.  Some things work for a while, then stop working, for whatever reason.

But I made this for myself today and you know what?  A particularly bad outbreak I was having on my hand is already fading.

So maybe I have a little hope, at least.

Golden Milk
adapted from Rosemary Gladstar

1/4 c turmeric powder
Almond milk (cow's or coconut are fine too!)
Honey

First, make a turmeric base by combining turmeric powder with 1/2 cup of water in a saucepan.  Bring it to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer until mixture becomes a thick paste.  Cool it and store in the refrigerator - this paste will make many servings of golden milk!

To make milk:  Combine 1 teaspoon turmeric paste with 1 cup milk and honey to taste (I used about 1 tablespoon) in a saucepan, heat until steaming.  Put mixture in blender, blend until frothy.

This can also be drunk cold or at room temperature, whatever your preference.