From Cooking to Medicine

Uses for vinegar, from household cleaning to medicinal.

I really do not believe that there is one thing this amazing product called vinegar can't do! It has hundreds if not thousands of uses and is not limited to cooking. There is not a room in anyones home that one could not find and use vinegar for.

The ancient Babylonians inscribed its virtues on stone tablets over 7000 years ago. Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, used it to treat his patients in 400 B.C. Helen of Troy bathed in it as a way of relaxing. In the Middle Ages, during the Black Plague, bands of thieves doused their skin in vinegar to protect themselves from germs before robbing the dead and dying.

Here are some tips and ideas for using vinegar:

Buy a large bottle of the cheapest brand vinegar and use it lavishly. The brand name has the same benefits as the non-brand, both are good so go for the cheapest brand.

Shower heads or spigot aerators get clogged with mineral deposits. Boil for 15 minutes in a solution of white vinegar and water-one half cup of vinegar in a quart of water, or stronger if the problem is severe. (Don't boil plastic; just soak in hot water and vinegar.)

Run a solution of vinegar and water through your coffee make periodically, just as though you were brewing a pot of coffee; rinse by running clear water through it. Free of mineral deposits and coffee oils. your coffee maker will last longer, and your brew will taste better.

Do the same thing with the steam iron, using equal parts of water and vinegar? After steaming for a few minutes, allow iron to stand for an hour. Empty and rinse well with clear water. Remove burned-on spots from the sole of the iron by rubbing with a paste made of salt and heated vinegar.

Add a few drops of vinegar to the water when poaching eggs. It will help keep the white together, and you "ll never notice ant flavor.

Vinegar and water make the best window-washing solution-for really grungy windows, make the solution as strong as necessary. It also removes soap film from shower tile and glass shower doors.

Old decals will come off with gentle scraping, if you soak them well with vinegar first.

A cup of white vinegar in the laundry rinse cycle will help dissolve alkalines left from detergent. The clothes will be solf and sweet-smelling, too.

Boil vinegar and water in your tea kettle to remove sediment. Open bowls of vinegar to help absorb the odor of cigarette smoke in a room.

If you have sticky hands or smelly hands, wash your hands with a drop of vinegar, it will cut the grease and reduce the smell.

Rub full strength vinegar to a tooth which you have a toothache in as well as the surrounding gum. This relief is only temporary, but it works.

Quickly cool down a painful sunburn by gently applying full strength vinegar on your skin. Do this the minute you come in from the sun and stop the burn before it starts to hurt in the first place.