Eat Ginger Cookies. You'll Feel Better

Two hours ago I was about to crawl back into bed, since Christmas hugs and kisses always seem to lead to New Year's colds and flu. But then I made my second batch of Alice Medrich's amazing triple-ginger cookies and a miracle happened: I'm well (almost). This recipe, in her enticing new "Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies," calls for no less than three-quarters of a cup of diced crystallized ginger plus two tablespoons of minced fresh ginger plus two teaspoons of ground ginger. Talk about a decongestant.

I thought I was imagining things, but I see in the late Maggie Waldron's great "Cold Spaghetti at Midnight" that ginger is good for nearly anything that ails you. It's famous as a stomach soother (my in-law equivalent hates the crystallized kind because she remembers it as a seasickness antidote on whale-watching trips), but apparently it will also "curb flatulence." And it does help with colds and flu, Waldron says, prescribing a tablespoon grated into a warm cup of water to beat a cough and a few slices to be chewed to sweat off a fever. I was fine with raw cookie dough.

(The best detail Waldron offers is that pharmacists in the 16th century (presumably in Europe) were "given a monopoly on gingerbread after it was decided that it was actually a drug made from ginger. Angry grocers fought back and eventually won the right to sell it, but the memory of the furious battle can be found today in fairy tales where the wicked witch almost always lives in a gingerbread house.")

I know we're supposed to be thinking about dieting right about now. But cookies are fine for medicinal purposes.....
For more info- http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguides/blogs/editor/2010/12/eat-ginger-cookies-youll-feel-better-.html