Exotic Plants And Fruit

There is a huge range of natural ingredients for ancient traditional, highly specialized, you can say, food and drink.

If you go to a modern Western doctor, and you present with sore joints or skin inflammations - any gambler will give 'London to a house-brick' their (the doctor's) first port of call, when it comes to medicines, is to prescribe you a cortisone cream or preparation or even injection.

Chinese medicine has a large array of natural products from which it is able to draw, to source substances that in a lot of instances, are really the exact same active ingredient as what a Western doctor might employ, but coming from a natural and not a synthesized source.

Neem powder is bitter, and you are best
off using it in tiny amounts as a tonic with
something like apple spritzer and cinnamon and ice

The South Indians in particular view 'ordinary' food as medicine, and the mid-Sub Continent Indians also do, though to a slightly lesser extent.

An important thing to remember, whether it is in Chinese medicine or Indian traditions about 'active ingredient food' - is that in many cases more is not better.

Neem is one of those kinds of traditional natural ingredients. In my view, Neem has similar properties as glucosamine, and also steroids. Additionally, it has other properties similar to fennel seed or fennel bulb, namely, that it cuts bad cholesterol and stabilizes blood sugar.

As far as taste goes, it is bitter and this is where you can employ it in drinks - that is, in much the same way as you might use, say, Angostura Bitters.

In the modern Western commercial world, people often assume that more is better, and by doing that, they mess up the whole beauty of some of these ingredients. A good example is Mangosteen - large groceries often stock Mangosteen juice and the packaging always says 'high in anti-oxidants.'

Mangosteen fruit tastes great, but the secret of this thing is in the outer husk or peel. This has substances still not at all fully understood by Western science and that are easily as good as atropine. If you steep these outer pithy shells in hot water, you can cure just about about anything at all to do with the gut - except no one that is not ill at the time will believe you because there is pretty much no taste and no coloration of the hot water that has had the peels steeping in it.

Mangosteen - it's the unflavored
outer husks that are 'the thing,' not the
purple juice they sell you in shops, although that's okay.

And everyone that was actually ill will for ever after swear by the thing.

All the same, this is another fruit where more is certainly not better because, unlike ripe Mangoes, where a lot more is like having a hit of Serotonin - more Mangosteen can place pressure on your kidney and liver over time.

I mean, okay, we can get into something outlandishly magical if you like...

Neem is one of those things that is sure, maybe okay if you are one of these austere, strong-willed people who can actually drink the tea that you can make from it - and the caveat is, no, it is not supposed to be strong, because this is just a tiny tonic thing, not a full-flavored 'pai ho' golden elixir thick with syrup or sugar!

But it's best performance comes when it is added to this 'magic thing...'

Now this 'magic thing' - well, I'm not so sure I wouldn't say it will raise someone from the dead, because that of course, very much depends upon whether the subject wants to be dead and to remain dead of course and providing we are not talking about a lot of mechanical catastrophic separation...

But not only will it raise you from the death bed but it will cure all diseases and prolong your existence on this Earth for as long as you choose and you will in any case go to the next life happy in the knowledge that if there is anything actually better, there, than what you had been imbibing via this 'magic elixir' here, then you'll be more than happy to flit off to 'over there' in any case, afterwards.

After having partaken of the magical thing.

Now bearing in mind that Alex Jones makes money from 'bone broth' I hesitate to say anything about what the South Indian 'magical thing' is here because fifteen minutes after I post it, and all of fifty people here read it, somehow, magically (different kind of 'magic,' though - lol) the thing will be being sold in plastic bottles and packages all over, well, everywhere. And then two weeks after that, we will have Universities teaching degree courses, all wrong, about what 'makes it go.'

So yeah... ...nah.

Second in line, though, is your basic 'thayir' - and I'm writing it the way you will find it on 'Google-Search' but that is not the actual word in Tamil. And for this you absolutely need fresh curry leaves or you will just plain not be getting the right thing. ...There are not that many decent recipes for this on-line, but you can play around until you get what tastes good to you. Ordinary buttermilk will do or plain natural (sour style) yogurt.