OH MY GOD OM NOM NOM SO DELICIOUS

so, i'm fighting off a cold. last night, i had all the "i can't move, now" apathy and bleargh and stuff, plus an unpleasant hacking cough. i worked from home today to spare my coworkers and hydrated like a hydrating thing, plus liberal use of halls cough drops, and my throat is feeling a bit better. it appears to be what clauclauclaudia has had and i'm just lagging her by a day or two.

and then, today, in between banging my head against HTML 1.1 headers and F5 iRules, inspiration struck.

several years ago, i found an awesome ginger honey tea that i haven't been able to find since. today i said to myself "hey, self! you have sweeteners and boiling water in your house and a big chunk of ginger in your freezer. i bet if you mix them right, you'll have some yummy stuff." and then realized that i had the *perfect* sweetener -- simple syrup with a bit of lemon flavor in it (i'd thrown some lemon zest in while it was cooling and then strained it out as i poured it into a bottle, so it was all citrus tasty with the lemon oils).

so i shaved off slivers of ginger with a paring knife and steeped it in boiling water for a long while and then poured myself a cup and added the syrup to it and OH MY GOD IT WAS TASTY. i think i could feel my throat recovering as i drank it. then i fed some to claudia, and she agreed it was yummy.

i think my next task is to make ginger-lemon flavored simple syrup, with an eye towards being able to just add boiling water to that and have something similar for less effort at the time. and portable - i could bring some of it to work and make tasty ginger tea there.

as it is, i do believe this household has a new thing to make when we're sick and pathetic.