Cold Spaghetti at Midnight
by By Waldron, Maggie
Category: Cooking , General

What do hot chicken soup for breakfast and cold spaghetti at midnight have in common?The power to comfort, revive, and even heal, or so goes the wisdom of folk medicine. The body and the mind respond quite miraculously to nourishment and intelligent therapy - and food is the first and best medicine in both cases.Maggie Waldron, a storyteller par excellence and a true exponent of commonsense health, concurs. In this irresistible and persuasive volume she convinces us of the remarkable curative powers and psychological benefits hidden in even the most ordinary foods.She explains comforters and revivers, the foods and remedies drawn from our warmest childhood memories, the foods we still turn to when we're blue and out of sorts: steaming cinnamon tea on a bleak winter night, cooling sherbet for a sore throat, cold spaghetti for a nighttime raid on the refrigerator to erase a trying day.Ms. Waldron teaches us how fasting cleanses and clears the decks of toxins. She analyzes one hundred foods, herbs, and spices that can actually heal bodies and even ward off certain diseases, from that now proverbial chicken soup rich in mother love to fruits and vegetables containing beta carotene, effective against some types of cancers. She offers age-old remedies for dozens of ills from migraines (the herb feverfew) to hayfever (stone fruits) to insomnia (a spoonful of molasses) to motion sickness (fresh ginger), and stomach cramps (anise).Throughout, there are more than 150 recipes, from cornbread to egg creams and the king of gumbos, that will let you keep those health-giving foods on hand.This is the book to curl up with when you're sick, when you're well, when you need to be advised and would love to be entertained. Maggie Waldron tells her stories and offers her advice with incomparable wit and charm. She'll probably make you feel as good as cold spaghetti at midnight tastes.