Poor Me!!

How do you fancy cuddling up to the little fellow to the left? He's a cutie isn't he? He's soft toy replica of Streptococcus pneumoniae, the bacteria responsible for ear ache, and can be yours for just $7.95 from this site.

Personally I have no need for a soft toy replica having been laid low with the real thing for the past few days. It's no fun I can tell you. I've been laid on my sofa with a hot water bottle pressed to my head hoping my body will reject the little bugger pronto without my having to resort to getting a prescription for nausea inducing antibiotics and while the pain seems to be lessening it's unfortunately not disappeared quite yet, so this evening I tried an old Indian remedy of garlic infused oil drops into my ears. I'm serious. I thought my Indian colleague was having me on when she suggested it, but she backed it up with this article from Organicauthority.com and, well, who am I to question the Organic Authority, when the word 'authority' is right there in the name.

"It doesn't work," said Ian, fellow sufferer of ear infections. "I tried that once, I bought this really posh garlic infused olive oil, warmed it and dripped it into my ears and it didn't make a blind bit of difference."

"You're not supposed to buy the oil from Dean & Deluca," retorted our Indian colleague huffily, "you're supposed to use fresh garlic and infuse it yourself. It doesn't work if you buy ready infused oil from the gourmet deli."

For some reason I have this image of Ian with bits of cotton wool and thyme garnish sticking out of his ears ha ha!!

Whatever anyway tonight I cooked up 8 cloves of garlic in a quarter of a cup of olive oil, then scooped out the cloves and dropped 10 blobs of infused oil in my offending right ear. The reserved cloves were all lovely, soft and mushy after being cooked slowly in oil for 15-20minutes. It would have been a shame to waste them, so instead I spread them on crusty french bread and enjoyed them with a nice Californian Cabernet. It's the only way to treat an ear infection ;-)

P.S. I'll let you know tomorrow if it's worked on the earache, but the treatment wasn't nearly as unpleasant as I was anticipating. Quite soothing in fact. Next week I'll likely be back to tell you how to treat for olive oil on the brain ha ha!! No, but seriously, do you think that could be a side effect?