Vinegar

We are lice-free at last with Listerine, alcohol, vinegar and Denorex! We sprayed four heads every night with Listerine before bed, then combed and combed every inch with a nit comb. The lice were gone in three days, but we continued this ritual for seven more days to kill off any newly hatched eggs each day. I soaked the four separate nit combs in rubbing alcohol between uses and dipped them periodically in the alcohol as I combed. We also used vinegar on one severely affected head to loosen the nits.

Each week a nutritionist from the University of Maryland Medical Center provides a guest post to The Baltimore Sun's health blog Picture of Health (baltimoresun.com/pictureofhealth), which is printed here. This week, Elaine Pelc weighs in on barbecuing. Grilling can be a very healthful cooking method that does not lack in flavor. The grill's flames help to develop rich, smoky flavors in some pretty standard fare. Cooking on the grill can be so versatile, you can prepare appetizers, side dishes, main courses and even dessert.

Vinegar is one of those indispensable pantry items. It can tenderize meat, make buttermilk, add fluff to cakes and rice and even reduce saltiness in soups or other foods. Vinegar is also a well-known ingredient in marinades and dressings, but how about sweets? Here's a vinegar-pie recipe from White House Foods: Blend 1 1/2 cups of sugar with 1/2 cup melted, unsalted butter in a medium bowl. Whisk in 3 large eggs, 2 tablespoons of white distilled or apple-cider vinegar and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract until thoroughly combined.

It's supposedly good for you to eat pork or cabbage or black-eyed peas at New Year's, and for my last post of the year I offer you this recipe for “caviar” made with black-eyed peas. It's a variant of a recipe for the 1970s in a Time-Life book that The Sun published in 2000. It has been quite serviceable for the holiday in our house. Here are a couple of things to consider. Dried black-eyed peas are better than canned, because you can have more control over whether they get mushy.

Q.Thank you for printing the vinegar treatment for foot fungus. My husband has had so-called jungle rot since his days as a soldier in Vietnam. It's been incurable, but now it is all but gone, with only a few soaks needed every so often to keep it from coming back. My father, an eye doctor, told an elderly patient about vinegar. She was about to have a toenail amputated by another doctor because the fungus could not be cured. She started soaking her foot and saved her toenail. A.Dermatologists groan when we write about home remedies for nail fungus.

When my mind turns to vinegar, I think of pickles, and barbecue sauces and evocative nicknames. Vinegar helps transform cucumbers into pickles. Vinegar's power to tenderize meats puts it at the heart of the best barbecue sauces. And whenever I hear the word "vinegar," I am reminded of Vinegar Bend Mizell. His real name is Wilmer David Mizell. He was a pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals and later the Pittsburgh Pirates. I never saw him play. I didn't follow those teams. I simply loved the name.

I have a 3-year-old and am expecting a new baby in a few weeks. I hate to use harsh chemicals to clean our house and usually rely on good old soap and hot water, sometimes with vinegar or baking soda. I use bleach or Bon Ami sparingly for some things. I found a recipe for a home cleaner spray -- a simple mixture of white vinegar, water and a few drops of essential oil for fragrance. I spray this mixture everywhere, confident that I could eat it if I had to. It does a great job on the stainless kitchen sink, microwave, countertops and bathroom sink.

I got out of my exercise routine over the holidays and am only gradually getting back into shape. My sore muscles are slowing me down and I wonder if you have any home remedies to relieve these aches and pains.A relaxing soak in a warm bath after exercise can work wonders. One reader suggests putting 2 cups of cider vinegar into the bath water for additional relief.A skier offers another idea. He takes 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda in a glass of water after a day on the slopes. The idea is to neutralize the lactic acid buildup in muscles after heavy exercise.

Food fads come and go. A taste sensation one day turns dull the next. Time to move on to something else.Currently, vinegar is the latest darling of professional chefs. The puckery liquid is used to deglaze saute pans to create a small sauce, reducing the need for butter and cream in the process. Various herb vinegars are stirred into low-fat yogurt for a new kind of salad dressing.But be careful; not just any old vinegar will do. Plain old vinegar is just sour wine (vin aigre). Chefs are partial to good red-wine vinegar.

Frequently, especially in old recipe books, a recipe will call for just "vinegar." Which kind is it referring to -- cider or white vinegar? The name vinegar is from the French vin aigre, or bad (sour) wine, but, in fact, vinegar can be made from any fruit or grain. It is the product of a two-step method. In the first step, yeasts turn the grapes (or apples or barley or rice) into alcohol, resulting in wine (or cider, ale or rice wine). In the second step, bacteria acts upon the alcohol to turn it into acid, and you wind up with wine vinegar or cider vinegar or malt vinegar or rice vinegar.

When I reached for one of this season's final tomatoes, I got a surprise. It had bruised and was emitting white foam. In another time and place, that tomato, as injured as it was, would have gone into the stewing caldron. Bruised, soft, mushy, reject tomatoes found a welcome at our Guilford Avenue home. September was our ketchup-making month. This was a house where my grandmother and her sister made so much from scratch, from their own clothes to their laundry and kitchen soap.

Vinegar is one of humanity's oldest condiments, and when it comes to mealtimes, it can be among the home cook's best friends. Vinegar is made by acetic fermentation, a process that basically converts alcohol into acid. Most countries produce their own vinegars, typically based on the most popular alcohol there. So, France and Italy produce wine vinegars. Spain brings you sherry vinegar. Asians distill rice wine (e.g. sake) vinegar, while Great Britain creates vinegar from beer (malt vinegar)

Bernard Carter Boykin, a retired Baltimore businessman and World War II Navy veteran, died May 12 of leukemia at Gilchrist Hospice Care. He was 89. The son of a businessman and a homemaker, he was born in Baltimore and raised in Ruxton, where he spent the remainder of his life. He was a 1939 graduate of Gilman School and earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1943 from Williams College. In 1954, he earned a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the Johns Hopkins University.

Few endeavors in life are as rewarding and frustrating as having a fig tree in your yard. On the plus side, it produces loads of ripe fruit. On the minus side, it produces loads of ripe fruit. The fruit attracts birds. They peck the fruit, knocking juicy bits off the tree and onto cars parked below. A fallen fig leaves a tenacious stain, one that even a high-pressure hose has trouble dislodging. Combine these fig stains with the droppings deposited by feasting birds, and for a few weeks in the summer cars residing under the trees look as though they have been trashed by paint-ball-wielding vandals.

When you eat steamed crabs are you a dipper, a swiper or a sauce-maker? A dipper removes the crab meat from the shell then drops it in a bowl of liquid, usually apple-cider vinegar or melted butter. A swiper rubs the crab meat quickly over the bits of seasoning clinging to the shell. A sauce-maker combines ingredients, usually mustard, mayonnaise and ketchup, then drags the crab meat through this creation. There is also another option: None of the above. That is, just eating the crab meat as soon as it pops out of the shell.

A year ago, an acclaimed architect-artist swooped into Baltimore and tore out a front lawn, leaving a garden and a budding revolution in its place. Has either one borne fruit? Clarence Ridgley, a supervisor at a plastic bottle factory, surrendered his West Baltimore yard to Fritz Haeg's Edible Estates project, a deliciously subversive attempt to replace grass with plants people can use. After checking in with Ridgley recently, I'd say it's easier to coax peppers, grapes and turnips out of the ground than it is to persuade people to grow food out front.

Drivers roaring up and down the Jones Falls Expressway often find themselves smelling pickles or sniffing fresh potato salad.Most people just think it's their imagination or blame it on the pungent odors that envelop Baltimore on sultry nights or humid days.A few people identify a group of old industrial buildings at Cold Spring Lane as "the pickle works." This identification is nearly correct. But you won't find any cucumbers here.Those who call it the vinegar works get the A-plus.A few more might even recognize the fieldstone and frame buildings alongside the Central Light Rail Line and not far from the expressway as the Melvale Distillery, once the largest liquor distillery in the state.

Q. I read in your column about a nondrug treatment for toenail fungus. Could you please send me the home remedy since I now have fungus myself? The prescription my doctor offered is way too expensive.A. Over the years we have collected lots of remedies for nail fungus. This infection can make nails thick, rough, yellowish-brown and crumbly. Our favorite approach is a vinegar soak -- 1 part vinegar to 2 parts warm water.Q. I took Zocor for high cholesterol and stopped because it caused me to have seizures.

We are lice-free at last with Listerine, alcohol, vinegar and Denorex! We sprayed four heads every night with Listerine before bed, then combed and combed every inch with a nit comb. The lice were gone in three days, but we continued this ritual for seven more days to kill off any newly hatched eggs each day. I soaked the four separate nit combs in rubbing alcohol between uses and dipped them periodically in the alcohol as I combed. We also used vinegar on one severely affected head to loosen the nits.