A garlic a day for good health

Add a couple of cloves of garlic to your diet to boost your immunity

Garlic with its antiviral and antibacterial properties helps boost your immunity and keeps you looking fresh and healthy. While in some cases garlic supplements are available and prescribed as a preventive measure for common cold, it's actually very easy to incorporate a few cloves of garlic in our daily meals. Here's how you can consume garlic without having to deal with that awful breadth.

Add it to your soup: Soup itself is a very good decongestant and helps warm up the body. Make your own vegetable or chicken broth soup at home and add garlic to it to enhance the flavour as well as get its antibiotic effect. Here's what you can do:

Bring two cups of water to a simmer over medium-high heat in a small saucepan. Add garlic (grated and made into a paste, for better flavouring), some thyme or oregano seasoning, one tablespoon of olive oil and salt to taste to the water. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes until the broth is fragrant. Add green vegetables (fresh peas, diced carrots, beans, spring onions, chopped capsicum, or other vegetables of your choice) to the broth and simmer uncovered for another five to eight minutes until the vegetables are tender. Taste and adjust salt. Beat one egg in a bowl, and add a little freshly ground pepper to it. Remove a small ladleful of the soup, and whisk it into the egg to temper it. Turn the heat off under the soup, and stir in the egg mixture. The egg should cloud the soup but shouldn't scramble. Add some extra pepper on the top, pour out in a bowl and enjoy.

Make your own garlic drink: The smell of garlic makes it difficult to be consumed raw, but when you use other ingredients with an equally powerful taste, it's easier. Here's a drink you can try:

Take a large saucepan and add three cups of water. Grate five cloves of garlic and add it to the water. Cover the lid and bring it to boil so that the garlic fumes don't escape. Turn off the heat after its boiled, add 10ml honey and the juice of one lemon to the garlic-water and stir well. Strain it into cups and sip it, while inhaling the garlic fumes.

Try garlic vinegar: Desperate times need desperate measure, and if you are dealing with a stubborn cold, you must try this garlic-vinegar recipe which is sure to benefit you instantly.

In a medium sized bowl, add vinegar (at least half the bowl). Mince one large bulb of garlic (at least 10-15 cloves) and add it to the vinegar. Cover it and let it sit for about an hour. The vinegar absorbs all the raw qualities of the garlic, making it a really strong solution. Strain it and drink the solution when you need immediate effects. Otherwise, use it as a salad dressing or in other recipes that use vinegar.

By Nairita Mukherjee, TNN | Jan 3, 2013,