Cottage by the Sea

I wanted to clean up a storm today and do a bit of baking too.
November and December my family have most of their birthdays. Four of us all pretty immediate family. So since no one works on Thanksgiving Day we can get together to eat, we usually have a birthday cake for all of us and celebrate a little communal birthday. We get free turkeys from Shop Rite from accumulating shopping points and so it makes a good dinner for us all the way around.
Shop Rite lets you have a free or extremely reduced price Butterball, Empire or ShopRite brand turkey around all the major holidays.
I am coming down with a cold though and not sure I can do it this year. For me a cold is usually not just a cold. I tend to get asthmatic bronchitis or plain bronchitis. I was fine this morning and then it hit all of a sudden like a ton of bricks.
A few years ago though, when I was at my sickest with asthmatic bronchitis, an Russian woman, a doctor I believe told me of a weird cure, which I tried and amazingly it worked. An Israeli nurse told me to use echinacea and though I am the world's worse skeptic with natural remedies, I tried that too and it was amazing how it cut through the length of the illness and brought it to a close. Later on when I felt a cold coming I would take echinacea and usually that was enough to stave it off.
The Russian woman's "cure" for bronchitis is from Europe evidently and is very old but it did help.
You boil potatoes in their jackets til done. Then take them out of the water and you can use them for soup, dinner.. whatever. But while the water is still boiling you add a few teaspoons full of baking soda to it. The combination of the potato water and the baking soda make a soothing lung opening gas that you then breathe in slowly. Just as you would make yourself a hot dish of water with vaporub in it to inhale. I was astounded how much better I felt and could breathe and how the coughing was diminished. So, I pass it along to you in hopes that it might also help you. I know it sounds weird ,but the chemical reaction has a soothing and healing effect on the lungs. It's good for any coughing.

As of now I am not sure what will happen tomorrow. If I don't feel much better in the morning I suppose I will cancel out and stay home in bed and maybe we can all get together on Sunday.
I hope this is just a passing fancy cuz I hate being sick.

Its just 3:57PM and already getting darker outside. On go the lights!
Hope your day tomorrow is lovely.

Meanwhile another view of Central Park