First, John, I hope your daughter feels better quickly. The flu is "going around" here too, the H2N3 variety, or something like that. Flu shots are 23% effective this year. Sure enough, I got the shot AND the flu, although it's strictly upper respiratory for me. It's still hanging on, after a month. (sigh)

Anyway, if I'm sick myself, I eat oatmeal, hot tea, or more likely, nothing at all, especially if my stomach is upset.

My girls always liked chicken noodle soup or chicken rice soup, with homemade bread. Ginger ale settled upset stomachs, although they liked Sprite or 7-Up better. My doc used to recommend the BRAT diet: Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, Toast.

Somehow my family always wanted something kind of bland and high in carbs, like pasta, toast, soup and bread, mashed potatoes, rice dishes, crackers. I always thought they needed more protein, so I was always urging them to eat eggs with the toast or peanut butter on the crackers. I was normally unsuccessful.

Annie

Hot and Sour Soup.

Mike's Minestrone. You don't have Mike, but it's just good minestrone. One important thing about this for sick people is to cook all the snap out of the veggies so they're not scratchy on the throat.

Well condensed homemade chicken soup (Jewish penicillin). Good with rice. Slurpy noodles not so much because slurping makes the ears hurt.

Pasta all'Arrabiata or Fra Diavolo served piping hot (pasta heated in the sauce), slightly past al dente so it's easy to press against the roof of the mouth to apply heat to the underside of the sinuses.

Pasta al Formaggio e Marsala con pepe nero. Total sickie favorite. A pasta that holds heat and sauce, like radiatore, a roux based cheese sauce using all the ends of the most pungent cheeses (assuming patient can't taste anything subtle), herbs and aliums, a goodly dose of Marsala wine and a lot of freshly ground black pepper.

Anything spicy and gooey, actually, will help by heating up the insides, and spices are good for the immunities. :) Curry. Chinese spicy noodles. Cuban orange garlic chicken.

-- Uh oh. Is spicy okay for the fragile tum? Maybe not!! But that's what I do... Maybe chicken pot pie? Ginger tea?

If I'm too sick to cook and don't want someone taking care of me (I hate having to talk to people when I'm sick), I order in Sichuan from the place that has no MSG and low fat. :)

Soft boiled eggs and soldiers.

Homemade potato soup pureed very smooth. My mom still makes this for me if I get sick - which doesn't happen often and I've been making it for friends who have family members coping with cancer.

Also, tea with honey and lemon; gingerale, apple juice and cran-apple juice. Some people enjoy homemade stirred custard as they begin to feel a little better - not overly sweetened. This was my MIL's invalid food of choice. Just to have her make it and bring it to me made me feel better.

Teresa

I'd follow the advice in the picture.

Chicken soup. Tea. A collection of Far Side cartoons.

I've been sick with something this week, and it hasn't been fun. At first, nothing was good cause I couldn't keep it down. Then, when that phase was waning, and the cough and dizziness took over, all I wanted was ginger ale and crackers. I had some home made veggie broth in the freezer, which hit the spot, too. Jerry was kind enough to get me real ginger ale, that actually had ginger in it. It really, really hit the spot.

I'm on day 5 of this crud, it's moved to my head, and I still have little appetite. I went to work yesterday, which was a mistake, and only managed to get down half a can of Progresso minestrone. Yuck. I don't think I could eat another bite of Progresso soup again for a long time, because that's what I've been eating most of the week since I ran out of my home made veggie broth.

Anyway, the thing I'd think, to address what you've done for her, is to ask her what she feels like eating. I'd think pork belly would be too greasy, but the mushroom part sounds wonderful. Potato soup might be good, too. I'd keep it simple, not too fancy. Besides, if you make it too good for her, she may never leave.

This is NOT the January diet I was planning.

Sally

By the way, John, you really need to write a blog, if you aren't already. You are such a talented writer.

Sally

I've had the flu which hung on, more times than I care to remember. I had good luck avoiding dairy. So it's not what to eat, it's what not to eat. Otherwise, rest and fluids and vitamin-rich stuff seems to be the only way out.

I make chicken soup (legs & thighs &/or wings) w/ a good amount of green stuff in it like fresh parsley, spinach, plus well cooked carrots, onions & fresh garlic & cayenne pepper as well - full of vitamins A, C & the pepper clears my sinuses. Sometimes I put some pasta in it, if I'm in the mood.That & some fresh fruits like oranges are what works for me. Of course lots of hot herbal teas as well.

I try to avoid dense, hard-to-digest foods w/ a lot of fats & starches in them, since they can promote nausea. If there are stomach 'issues' remember the BRAT diet : Bananas, Applesauce, Rice, Tea or Toast.

The flu hit here this year and it has not been fun. For any congestion/mucous green tea is on order, it loosens up the stuff better than Robitussin. We often include mint in the tea because it is soothing. We add a bit of honey but I try to take it easy when people are sick.

My favorite soup for sick ones would be an Asian style chicken noodle with plenty of ginger, garlic, shiitake mushrooms, rice noodles and chopped greens of some sort. I think that a garlic broth would be lovely when I am sick but since I would be the one preparing it, it is not likely to happen.

For the adults of the house when sick, a potato and green chile stew is great. Green chile is loaded with vitamin C and it helps tremendously.

Depending on the weather (temperature) I think smoothies loaded with greens are also a great choice. When liquefied, the body can absorb more of the nutrients, I was just too miserable to go in and make them.

I do hope your daughter's recovery is quick. Last night was the first night I did not suffer from coughing fits all night long. I am so ready to be well again.

John I hope she feels better soon.

I have managed to fight it off over the holidays but feel it hitting me today. Sore throat, running sinus and dead tired. A nutritionist put me on oil of wild oregano and vitimin D capsules last year and it really too care of it all in 3 days. So 3 of each are in me now and more later. Both boost your immune system and the oregano has antibiotic properties. These are backed by a teaspoon of raw honey and 1/4 tsp. of cinnamon, twice a day.

For upset tummies, keep some candied ginger in the pantry or fresh ginger in the freezer. Both are stronger than the beverage and work faster. They really helped with my chemo drugs. You can also try to find Altoids ginger candies.

If the problem is intestinal, load up on probiotics, either tablets or kefir, to bring back the flora your gut needs.

What do I eat when sick? If tummy troubles, nothing. For the cold/flu, I crave anything chicken. And like Pllog, hot and sour soup to warm everything up.

Sorry that you daughter is sick with the flu. When I feel bad the first thing I want is homemade chicken noodle soup. Just smelling it cooking will make me start to feel better. I always use the legs and thighs for my soup. Lots of onion and celery to make the broth. I also drink plain tea and ginger ale. I also try to avoid public places with lots of people. Wash my hands it seems like 100 times a day. Keep those germs away.
Mary

Or this?

Here is a link that might be useful: Stracciatella

Garlic soup, garlic soup and, may I also recommend, garlic soup.

Most of us know of garlic's antiviral properties, so I'll skip over all that. Anyway, my favorite garlic soup is replete with garlic (30 cloves), chicken stock and cayenne pepper.
It may not be panacea for all that ails you, but it's a delicious way to fight a cold.

And if your daughter gets tired of hot liquids, try juicing a carrot, an orange and an apple with a knob of fresh ginger, and a little bit of honey, if needed.
Serve chilled, in a tall glass with a straw and a kiss on the forehead.

Sol

I can totally sympathize with you DD-san, John. I, too, have had an unhappy tummy for several months now. It earned me an endoscopy today. All appears ok, but now I'm a little queasy from the procedure.

For supper tonight, I'm having potato soup that I put in the freezer a month or so ago. It is from The Pioneer Woman, link below. Vanilla ice cream is good, too. And so is tea. I prefer Earl Gray decaf.

Earlier this week, I met a colleague for lunch. He wanted to go to P. F. Chang's. I had the won-ton soup. I think you could easily mimic it. Chicken broth with shrimp, mushrooms, bits of chicken, and fresh spinach, along with pork filled wontons. It was tasty but not too filling.

At the doc's office today they told me to avoid tomatoes, chocolate and anything mint. And anything spicy.

Hope your DD is well soon. Sorry her team lost, plus she got sick. That really stinks.

Here is a link that might be useful: Pioneer Woman Potato Soup

Soup, lots of soup. All sorts of soup. Depending on the flu, more liquid than chunk because throwing up chunk sucks. Watch too much bouillon because it's high in salt, but straight stock by the cup with a few saltines can be warming, satisfying, and hydrating.

Hangover foods. Sounds weird, but sometimes when you are sick you are sensitive in the same ways that you are when you are hung over.

Nothing that requires a lot of chewing, because when you are stuffed up, chewing a lot sucks. Because trying to chew with your mouth open so you can breathe sucks. No dairy because dairy coats and works against all that mucus and such.

I like eggs for protein- easy to eat, easy to digest, tends to stay down. Toast, healthiest grainest stuff you can stand because you might not be eating much else. Soup... tons more soup.

Tea, water, non acidic juices. If you can stand it, pickle juice and pickles because they pack a ton of electrolytes and other good stuff you tend to use burning up being sick. A good mellow bourbon or whiskey can help soothe a sore throat, but not too much- use a sipper, not a shot alcohol.

Garlic, lots of garlic. Then more garlic. Lot's of lemon and honey... Cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves- hot spices. Ginger!! Ginger tastes good, settles the tummy, and is generally a good burn out spice when sick. Mint when the hot spices aren't sitting well. Wasabi and horseradish to help drain out sinuses IF the stomach is easy- and it might be one of the few things you can taste.

French onion soup minus the cheese bread topping. I use Julia Child's recipe but Ina Garten's is good too. A good FO has an abundance of alcohol :-)

I'm sorry to hear that several of us are sick!. It's really going around this year.

Daughter San told me "I want something I can chew. I miss chewing." So we settled on a braised chicken breast and mashed potatoes. With excessive amounts of salt, butter and teriyaki sauce, since she can't taste much either. A pot of green tea. Another thermos of "liquid pig".

I'll be amazed if the rest of us don't get sick. She is staying in her room, but the cat sleeps with her, gets petted, then comes to the rest of us, carrying her lethal burden of virus. A feline plague carrier, and she's even a black cat.

Your soup sounds delicious! You might want to cook some extra just in case you get the bug-you sure won't feel like cooking. Hope you daughter feels better soon and the rest of you dodge the bullet!

I hope your daughter will feel better soon, John.

Our family has three standbys for illness. First is powdered cherry Kool-Aid, made with sugar. DH believes that hospitals administer dextrose intravenously for dehydration so he wants to preempt that with Kool-Aid. He also thinks it works better when made in a Mr. Kool-Aid pitcher. LOL

Second is pastina pasta cooked in chicken broth. That's easy on the stomach and throat too.

You'll find a recipe for Beef Tea in just about any antique cookbook. There are different methods for preparing it but this is the one I use. Cut all visible fat from a pound of beef and cut it into small cubes. Put them in a quart canning jar with a cup of water. Put jar on a rack in a deep pan and add enough warm water to come within an inch of the jar top. Bring almost to a boil and then lower heat and simmer for two hours or more. Turn off heat and cool in pan. Pour off beef tea through a fine strainer and add salt to taste. Discard meat.

We use garlic when a cold is just starting - either garlic and onion soup or a special pizza covered with paper-thin slices of garlic cloves from a local shop but avoid it for illness like flu or stomach viruses.

Two teas that are excellent for colds and flu:

Stash's Lemon Ginger herbal tea

The Republic of Tea's Decaf Ginger Peach

Also, if not already mentioned, simmer slices of peeled fresh ginger root in 2 cups water for about 15 minutes to make ginger tea. Add fresh squeezed lemon juice and honey to taste.

After a trip to the walk in clinic, we are resorting to codeine cough syrup. Along with alternating mugs of ginger and honey "tea" and cold fresh water.

Potato leek soup has been requested, so I have a chicken carcass in the pressure cooker for a quickie broth, while I'm prepping leeks and potatoes.

At SWMBO's insistence, our house is patrolled by roving cans of Lysol disinfectant spray and guarded by checkpoints of pump bottles filled with alcohol hand sanitizer. When entering the Room Of Illness aka daughter's bedroom, you don a mask (well, I don't, but SWMBO does) and minister to the Ill One, who is either laying on her side watching "Friends" from Hulu, laying on her back snoring, or doubled up coughing. After depositing fresh food and drink, picking up used tissues, and collecting used cups and dishes, you exit with your armful of biowaste. Stop at the checkpoint, receive a pump of hand sanitizer, spray Lysol around the closed door. When the Ill One leaves her room to use the toilet or take a shower, she is masked and SWMBO follows her, Lysol can held high, spraying a trailing cloud of fresh linen scented disinfectant. Sometimes SWMBO will walk into a room and start spraying, even if the Ill One hasn't been in that room all weekend. I think she thinks she can see droplets of flu virus floating through the air. She's even talked about spraying the cat. It is all quite funny, or would be if SWMBO hasn't made it clear there will be hell to pay if she gets sick before her departure for New York tomorrow.

P .S. Do you think all the hand sanitizer, Lysol, masks and confining Daughter to her room, will make a difference?. Or are SWMBO's chances of catching the flu from Daughter San about the same as if none of these precautions were in force?

This post was edited by johnliu on Sat, Jan 17, 15 at 18:11

Codeine cough syrup is one thing I would have loved to have with this illness. As much as my abs hurt from coughing, one would think I was on my way to 6-pack abs. One thing I found soothing for my throat was this honey-ginger-mint syrup. It was easy to make and very soothing. Fortunately, I made it when DH got sick so it was there for me when I needed it.

Here is a link that might be useful: Honey-Ginger-Mint syrup

John, all those measures could help, especially when accompanied by actual handwashing, etc. And assuming your SWMBO has her own bathroom. Bathrooms are the worst for transferring diseases. Also helps if the biowaste was handled with gloves and very hot water or immediate removal from the house.

They advertise sprays that are supposed to attack droplets in the air, though I don't know if Lysol is one of them. It should be a pretty good surface sanitizer, and the alcohol goo is a pretty good hand sanitizer.

Something that works quite well at keeping viruses at bay is black elderberry (sambucus). Since flying has got to be worse than a sick teenager for communicating diseases, maybe it's something she should start taking before she gets on the plane? It's pretty harmless stuff. I managed to get through a conference in a room that was a perfect disease incubator without catching what was being passed around by keeping myself dosed up with black elderberry. It can be taken from the first exposure on.

The best thing you have going for you is that your daughter was already miserable before she came home. She could well have been past the worst of the infectious stage. :)

Spraying lysol in the air and on linen that rubs against the skin?

Pls look up phenol and other active ingredients of lysol on Wikipedia. I'm not sure it's for spraying the air humans breath or their linen. Side effects seem to range from oedema to dermatitis.

I'm assuming John took some literary license to make his tale more amusing - and it worked. I had visions of SWMBO in opera length rubber gloves and a mask trailing after DD as a handmaiden with clouds of Lysol rather than incense. :-))))

It is the season and so many at work are always in some phase of a crud. A horrible cough, a woozy fever, congestion...
I made up a pretty safe spray cleaner with a 1/2 cup cheap vodka, 2 cups water, some eucalyptus, tea tree, and lemon grass oil. Another similar using bleach for surfaces but not a mist spray. Many disinfectants should not be air-sprayed in mist form because of the harmful inhalants.
The imagery is comical but i feel it is necessary to keep the bug from passing to others...those miserably ill have no consept of passing it on or caring...way too sick to care.
Door knobs and faucet handles, toilet handles...and get those sheets clean more often that usual, : )
I add vinegar to that cycle with the sanitary mode.

I've not had a flu since before 9-11. (it was memorable and horrid). DH gets something every year that involves the loss of voice. He often under dresses in the winter and catches himself chilled and susceptible. I've insisted he wear scarves and wash hands often.
I've made a few big batches of barrier hand cream that we use and one is on his desk at work.

I tend to want a rotation of warm liquids, lots of garlic and ginger in miso broth. Then a hearty beef stew when the fever breaks. Lots of tea with lemon and ginger...
Our freezer is stocked with broths all winter. I have a duck and heavy veg and ginger, garlic, cilantro stem, on the stove now with a pot of beans cooking. I'll pack the beans in pints with a pour-over of stock for the freezer. An easy brothy quick soup if one of us gets ill. I've stocked up with MisoMaster white and red and the chick pea one they make.
We never want much more than a tbsp of that in hot water when horrid.
A bit of rice or bean in veg, beef, chicken broth that i have frozen after day 4-5. An easy thaw and heat.
I just jumped up to check the beans and stock and started a mixed sprouted grain as well...to freeze with some stock...
You have me prepared.
I do hope she is feeling better and all in the home are not feeling the same...precautions of mask and gloves are not extreme....: )
It is nice that she has the comforts of home and the love that comes with care from parents. Such good care you are giving!!

Okay, my word image of SWMBO spraying after Daughter was exaggerated. SWMBO is not actually wearing gloves as she sprays.

So far, no one else in the house has caught ill from Daughter. Tonight SWMBO gets on an airplane and tomorrow I drive Daughter back to college. Then our time as a biosafety facility will come to a close.