Ginger

For as long as I can remember, I have been very prone to motion sickness. As a child, I needed only to say, "I don't feel so well" from the back seat of the car, and my parents would slam on the brakes and/or jam a bucket under my chin for the inevitable deluge. After a while, I learned that sleeping would keep me from being sick to my stomach, so I spent most car trips of over a few minutes in length asleep, stretched out on the back seat, since we didn't have booster seats Way Back Then.

As I've gotten older, it's gotten both worse and better. I don't tend to get carsick when I drive, and I've never noticed any tendency to get sick in planes or on any size of watercraft from a canoe up to a ferry. Most of the time if I am riding in a car and do start to feel queasy, I can fight it off and just feel miserable rather than actually being physically sick. Or I can fight it off long enough to fall asleep, which is quite easy for me to do thanks to the childhood Nap Conditioning of car trips. On the other hand, more types of roads make me sick than ever before. It no longer requires a hairpin road to make me ill; a parking lot or a bumpy road will work just fine. I now also become sick on roller coaster rides, carousels, and swingsets, for crying out loud. There's no way anyone would get me on the Teacup ride at Disneyland, thank you.

For a while I took Dramamine to combat motion sickness, but that requires a little pre-planning, as it's most effective if you take it more than an hour before you leave. In its favor, one dose tends to last me up to 48 hours and leaves me completely free of motion sickness to the point I can even read in the car. Unfortunately, even the non-drowsy formula tends to put me right to sleep, which is okay if I'm a passenger in a car but not great if I'm trying to ride a roller coaster.

Sometime this summer I finally decided to try a cure I'd heard about long ago but never investigated: ginger. I opted for crystallized (candied) ginger, some ginger chews, and some ginger candy to try various forms against one another. I also picked up some hot ginger lemonade. We gave it a try on a windy road out to the Oregon Coast, with me eating a couple of slices of candied ginger before leaving. Though I'm never going to eat candied ginger as a taste treat, it's not bad, and it has zero negative side effects. And it actually works. Doesn't last the 48 hours Dramamine or similar pills might; it lasts more like 6 hours. But it doesn't put one to sleep, it's inexpensive, and you can share it with anyone else who might be motion sick or even just peckish. The hot ginger lemonade was outstandingly good, but I can no longer find a source for it.

For anyone who wants to try the ginger route, I recommend going to an Import store and examining their selection of candies. I find mine at Cost Plus World Market, where I can get candied ginger, "Ginger Bears", ginger chews, pickled ginger, ginger ale and several other forms of ginger, some of which even tell you how much actual ginger is in the product. Even strong gingersnaps made with real ginger are effective. The trick is to be sure that the product contains substantial amounts of real ginger, not merely ginger flavoring. And if you really can't bear the taste of ginger, you can get ginger capsules in the Supplement aisles of some fancy supermarkets or vitamin shops, or you can make your own with ground ginger from the kitchen and gelatin capsules from the vitamin shop.

And as an added bonus, I have discovered that ginger works significantly better and faster for my heartburn than antacid tablets, and about as well as liquid antacids, without the potentially worrisome ingredients in the antacids. Wish I'd known that when I was pregnant!

Mint Ice Cream

For several years now, I've grown an herb garden. I have had things such as echinacea, horehound, feverfew, lavender, sage, bay, chives, valerian, and of course mint. My husband has made fun of me in the past for how little I've actually used the products of the herb garden, though I counter that they are as useful in just being attractive and good for local wildlife as they are for human consumption. Still, I decided this year I should make better use of the herbs I do plant. So far, the one I've made the best use of is the mint.

If you've never planted mint, take care. I'm convinced that all the Mentha species are actually invaders from the planet Kudzu, whose sole goal in life is to take over all Earthly garden spaces. While their free-ranging and easily-spreading habits are great when you want to naturalize an area, or when you find them growing wild along streams and springs, it's not so great when you're trying to keep a somewhat orderly herb garden. As a result, both my Peppermint and Spearmint plants are growing in containers this year. I see their little shootlets growing around the edge of the pot, seeking a way to escape and conquer the rest of the bed, but I'm faster than a growing plant and can nip them off before they get away.

And nip I did. I just harvested a cup of fresh leaves for my first ever batch of homemade ice cream. (While my husband came into our relationship with an ice cream maker, he never used it before we started dating, and we've never used it in the almost 8 years since. First time for everything!)

FRESH MINT ICE CREAM

* 2/3 cup fresh mint leaves, loosely packed
* 3/4 cup granulated sugar
* 2 1/2 cups whole milk
* 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
* 1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise and scraped
* 5 large egg yolks
* 1/4 cup honey
* 1/4 tsp table salt
* 1 cup chopped dark chocolate or mini chocolate chips (optional)

Put the mint leaves and sugar into a food processor, and process until the mint is finely ground and blended with the sugar. It will look kind of like green wet sugar at that point. If you don't have a food processor, you can use a blender, or a mortar and pestle.

In a medium saucepan, heat the milk, cream, and vanilla bean (pod included) on medium heat. Stir to keep from sticking.

In a medium bowl, whisk the egg yolks until they are smooth. Add the minted sugar mixture and combine until smooth.

When the milk mixture steams (do not let it simmer), take 1/4 cup of the hot milk and whisk it briskly into the egg yolk/sugar/mint mixture. Repeat with another 1/4 cup. This is an important step, as it warms and tempers the egg yolks so that they do not scramble on contact with the hot milk. Remove the saucepan from the heat, and slowly pour the mint mixture back into the hot milk mixture, stirring briskly until completely combined.

Return the saucepan to the stove and cook over medium heat. Add honey and salt. Cook and stir until the custard becomes thick and coats the back of a spoon well, 5-10 minutes. (Do not allow to boil.) The custard should hold a line when you draw your finger through it on the back of a spoon.

Set the saucepan into a large bowl filled with ice water, and stir well for several minutes to quickly cool the custard. Cover, and refrigerate until completely cool, at least 1 hour and up to 24 hours.

Pour the custard mixture through a fine mesh strainer to remove the mint leaves and vanilla bean bits. Add chocolate chips if desired. Churn in your ice cream maker according to the directions on the machine. Eat. Whine because there's not enough. Make another batch.