5 Comforting Flu Foods

Lucky me! I rang in the New Year with a mild case of the flu. Instead of sipping champagne at a fancy party, I cuddled with a hot toddy on the sofa.

As the week wore on my flu didn't get better and it didn't get worse. I thought I might be having allergy issue from the live Christmas evergreen garlands I made (for free! Learn how here) as well as the I thought it was your turn to clean the reusable furnace filter? game Husband and I unintentionally play a little too often.

We took down the live greenery and washed the reusable super allergy sucking furnace filter in hydrogen peroxide (oxygen) based bleach (chlorine bleach will weekend and destroy the filter.) I stripped our bed and washed everything from the mattress pad up, deep dusted the room, and shampooed the bedroom carpet. That usually gets rid of any allergen or dust that gives me a super stuffy head or migraine or both.

Nope. In fact, I felt worse.

My flu developed into a bacterial bronchitis infection.  I'm as feeling bad as my Plants vs. Zombies avatar looks. That will teach me not to slow down and take care of myself at the first sign of flu!

I'm shuffling around like a zombie too.

Cooking from scratch is wonderful for tons of reasons except when you are hacking up a lung and feel like an elephant is sitting on your fevered chest. Even if I felt like cooking, all my taste buds can detect right now are salty and sweet. I want comfort food. I think being sick that falls into the allowable 20 part of our 80/20 healthy vs not so healthy eating rule.

Here are my five flu comfort foods. In the interest of keeping it real, almost none of my personal comfort foods are made from scratch.

• Hot tea with lemon soothes my swollen scratchy throat. I used to add honey to it but it makes makes me thirstier. I use lemon juice from a bottle because lemons don't grow in snowy Ohio.

I'm leaving the dishes for Husband to load into the dishwasher. I don't want to spread this bacterial infection to him.

• Duck ramen soup - MUST be duck. I hit the lifetime ramen limit back in college but for some reason, I like duck flavored ramen from the Asian market so much it is comfort food. I don't add the packet full of hydrogenated oil but I'm not fooling myself that doing so makes this super healthy. It just feels good going down my sore throat. 

• Canned condensed soup. We don't have homemade soup in the freezer. I'm getting tired of duck soup after a week and a half. I planned on learning how to pressure can homemade soup after the holidays for times like this. Whoopsie on the timing eh?   

Husband gets epic bonus Husband points for buying me Chicken and Stars soup because he remembered me telling him the story about sick time was the only time my mom bought chicken and stars soup.

• Ginger Ale. Speaking of childhood sick only foods ginger ale also fell into that category. I'm glad I bought SodaStream Ginger Ale syrup when I saw on clearance. This version is made with sugar instead of Splenda (yuck!) like most of Sodastream's syrups.  

 Most of the time Husband makes club soda with our Sodastream with a splash of juice. We have a few syrups on hand to whip up soda for guests.

• Soy Ice Cream. Again Husband gets epic Husband points because he searched and found an ice cream my lactose intolerant self can use to soothe my sore throat when I am getting hot food fatigue. Since this ice cream is lactose free, it doesn't create extra phlegm. 

Even the chocolate is lactose free!

What are your favorite comfort foods when you are sick?

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