cough, cough, hack, hack

UGH!!  It sounds like the sickies are making their way around west Michigan again!  Last night I ended up taking Katie with me to Kevin’s karate class since my in-laws are still in Florida to find out the instructors son (same age as Katie) wasn’t feeling 100% so he sat in the bleachers by Katie & I so I could read them both some books.  I felt so bad for him.. he was acting fine until 10 minutes to go in class when he started telling me that his belly hurt.   Needless to say the first thing we did when we got home was wash our hands.

Then I just dropped Katie off at pre-school and I swear I heard one of the mom’s tell the teacher that her daughter was starting to feel better if not to give her a call and that’s while hearing another child cough away in class.   I’m hoping that cough was coming from one of the siblings instead. 

So I’m sure before long I’ll be having a sick pumpkin or two in my house.  If not, I will be total shocked since it’s not as if we have any hospital disinfectant we can use here. 

I did find something that helps with coughs though!  So if you, or someone you know comes down with a cough, try this!

• Take an onion (I just use the sweet onion) and chop it up in small pieces and put it in a tupperware type container (or a cool whip container would work too).
• Pour sugar on top of it.  I never really measure.. just enough to cover the onion completely.
• Put the lid on the bowl/container and have it sit for at least a couple hours.
• After a couple hours if you look you will start to see a syrup.. take a spoon and get some of that syrup and take it.    The longer your onion sits the more syrup you will get.    After awhile you won’t be coughing anymore.

I have used this 3 times now with Kevin and every time it worked!  The best example was he starting hacking when we got to Florida.  It was so bad that we actually called his parents up to give them a heads up in case they didn’t want to come up to see us.  They said they still would so Paul had me run to the store to get some cough medicine at $7 a bottle!   I bought it, but I also ended up buying the smallest onion I could find and the smallest bag of sugar I could find.  I think I spent about $2 total for the onion and sugar.  That night Paul’s parents got there and heard Kevin hacking away.  By then I had some syrup and gave him a spoon full before he went to bed.  I don’t remember if I gave him any during the night, but I’m sure I gave him another spoon full before we left for Magic Kingdom.   By the time we got home I had totally forgot about his cough.. I ended up asking Paul and his parents if they had heard Kevin cough at the park at all and they all looked at each other and said no!  It was then that they too became believers in it.   So now I always keep an onion on hand just in case.   Great thing is you don’t have to buy a huge onion.. just a small onion will do!  

Oh yeah.. I don’t do like a spoon full every hour or anything like that.  Just when he starts hacking I give him a spoon full.   I will admit since it’s made from onion it tastes like onion so you might want to have a chaser (glass of water) with you.  That’s the only why I can get Kevin to take it.  

If you ever do use this for a cough and it works for you too, please let me know!