Soup seeds
And just because 2022 didn’t wrench enough out of us, it thought having a colonoscopy and getting the flu three days before Christmas would be a good idea.
I admit to having scheduled the colonoscopy because I knew we wouldn’t be having company then. The flu was a bonus.
They say the colonoscopy prep is only one day, but because I am such an anxious rule-follower, it took up large amounts of brain space for a solid week. Once you schedule the date, they send you a packet of information to read. I imagine most people just skim for the basics, but rule follower that I am, I read every word. In my life there is no TLDR. I highlighted and took notes and I am not even kidding. I did not want to show up at the hospital and be told, “Sorry, we can’t do your procedure today because you ate a walnut on Monday.” I did not want to do this twice.
Did you know that five days before your procedure you are not allowed to eat nuts, seeds, or whole grains of any kind? I was amazed at how much of my diet includes those three things. Every berry and lots of vegetables contain seeds. Every flour-based product is whole grains. I felt like I was fasting. Then the day before it’s only clear liquids: broth, ginger ale, apple juice, etc. That was actually a lot easier. The whole thing took a lot of mental energy and I was glad it was over.
While I was going through all of the mental anguish leading up to colonoscopy day, Ben decided to invite the flu home, only we didn’t know it was the flu at the time. I figured it was just a man-cold. We slept in separate rooms, used separate bathrooms, and I spent a lot of time outside or in my basement office just trying to stay away from him so I wouldn’t get sick. Again, I did not want to go through the procedure prep twice.
Thursday came, I had my colonoscopy, and then I just slept off the sedative for the rest of the day. I was surprised at how tired I was but chalked it up to a bad (or no) diet for the last few days and all the adrenaline required to make sure I did every little thing exactly right. You have no idea how exhausting it is to be a serial perfectionist.
Then Friday hit and so did the flu. Fever. Chills. Body aches. Headache. Sore throat. Cough.
Did I mention the headache? It was brutal.
I slept on and off all day, waking only long enough to take more Tylenol and guzzle some water. When Saturday arrived and I said out loud, “My skin hurts,” I put two and two together and realized this was no man cold—it was the flu. I don’t know about you, but that’s always how I can tell the difference. I might have the worst cold of all time, but my skin doesn’t hurt. If it does, I know it’s the flu.
I can function through a cold. I can even function through a stomach virus. One time years ago when our youngest, Elijah, was a baby and we lived in a small house with only one bathroom, Elijah threw up a few times one day. I didn’t think much of it because babies, like puppies, sometimes randomly throw up for no reason. The next day all four older kids had it. (Remember—one bathroom.) Fun times, for sure.
Then the next day Ben and I both had it. Ben went to bed, and because there needed to be a nursing adult in the room, I took my pillow and laid on the living room floor. Every few hours Deborah (6 years old at the time) would bring Elijah and lay him next to me to nurse. Then she would pick him up and change his diaper and play with him until he fell asleep. Michael (8) kept the other children fed. At some point during that day, my sweet friend Theresa, whose family had already had this virus, opened the front door and shoved in a grocery bag of crackers and ginger ale then shut it and ran. A good time was had by all.
So I know it’s the flu if my skin hurts and I lose my capacity to function in any meaningful way. This is where I was Saturday morning.
By this time Ben had started to turn the corner and was getting slightly better but still spent a lot of time in the chair covered with two heavy blankets and the dog. Poor Hank didn’t know who was worse off and where he should be spending his time. Ben lived on Campbell’s chicken noodle soup and crackers for days. I ate almost nothing. I should have lost some weight through all this so at least there would have a bright spot, but my body was holding on to whatever few reserves I had and I ended up with the same number of pounds I started with, a huge disappointment.
Sunday (Merry Christmas) brought more of the same for me and frozen, bursting pipes plus thirsty cows at the farm for Ben. Next time you want to know why beef is so expensive, please refer to this post. Also, we are taking applications for farm interns—must have plumbing experience.
Somewhere in there the sneezing and congestion started and I wondered as I always do in these situations, where does it all come from? Maybe that’s TMI.
By the time Tuesday rolled around, my body was screaming for some nutrition. Mostly the aches were gone, the headache was manageable, and I had enough energy to be up for more than five minutes before collapsing in bed.
So I headed to the kitchen where I found in the refrigerator a pot of beef bone broth I had made before the devil invaded my body. I poured out a quart to save for future use and stuck it in the fridge.
To the remaining broth I added a quart of home grown and canned tomatoes, a can of peas, a pint of green beans, a few carrots, a large onion and 4 cloves of garlic, some shredded cabbage and a wad of chopped fresh kale. Basically I scavenged my refrigerator for any fresh vegetable I could find and threw it all in. I added a good dose of sea salt and pepper and some dried basil. Threw in a big handful of shredded meat from the bones.
I cooked half a cup of barley separately and threw that in at the last minute.
Please note this important point: always cook your barley (or rice or pasta or whatever) separately before you put it in the soup. If you just throw raw barley in the soup, it soaks up all the broth and leaves your soup … not-soupy. So cook it first, then add it. Okay? It’s so much better.
I let it simmer just a few minutes until the veggies were cooked and dished up a big bowl, and I don’t think it is psychosomatic in any way that I felt about a thousand times better by the time I finished eating. I could close my eyes and feel my insides sucking the nutrition out of all the vegetables and homemade broth. It was heavenly.
I ate more for dinner and then had it again for lunch the next day. When your body is fighting a nasty virus, it needs all the help you can give it, and good nutrition is the most important thing. You can’t fight the flu on white crackers.
Trust me when I say cooking nutrient-dense food does not have to be hard. If I can do it on day 5 of the flu, you can do it too. The key is being prepared.
Here’s how I got prepared: I got soup bones (we grow them, but you can buy them at the grocery store, or use cross-cut beef shanks) and made my own bone broth. It’s super easy and I explain how in this post. I saved the broth and shredded the meat, freezing that separately. I grew and canned tomatoes and green beans. The rest I bought and had in the fridge, but by next year I will have my own carrots, onions, garlic, peas, kale, and basil.
These are the beginnings—the seeds—for a tasty, nutritious soup. Buy the seeds now (in winter) to plant and grow in the spring, to harvest and preserve in the summer, to nourish yourself back to health next winter when you get the flu. I hope you don’t get it, but if you do, you’ll thank yourself a million times over when you eat that incredible bowl of deliciousness on day 5 and immediately feel better.
It just takes a few soup seeds.