Sick Food

Welp, remember that cold I mentioned my daughter having last week? She passed it on to Tom over the weekend, and now it's my turn. My throat feels like it's covered with fire ants, and my nose is like a leaky faucet.

Man...when's that motherly immunity going to kick in? When I was growing up, my mom almost never got sick. Everyone else in the house could have been coughing up a lung or sneezing their brains out, and Mom wouldn't even get the sniffles. Actually, come to think of it, now that I'm a mom myself, I wonder if she really did get sick but just never told anyone. That's kinda what I've been trying to do...

Speaking of my mom, I've been thinking about her a lot since yesterday, when I first started feeling cold symptoms. She always did so much to take care of me when I wasn't feeling well. I especially remember the food and drink she'd give me; there were certain things I could always count on eating and drinking whenever I was sick. Here are just a few of them.

Instant mashed potatoes. Maybe my foodie card should be revoked for liking these, but there was always something very comforting about them. They were particularly nice when I was sick with a sore throat, because they're smoother than regular mashed potatoes. Mom would always make them without milk or butter (dairy causing excess phlegm and what not), and she'd always use chicken broth instead of water. Such a simple thing, but so special.

Flat soda. Mom would take some kind of clear soda (usually 7-Up, Sprite, or ginger ale) and pour it into a cup, then pour it from that cup into another cup, and pour it back and forth between the two cups until all the fizz was gone. (I was always mesmerized by this process, by the way.) I probably had this more often for an upset stomach than for a cold, but I'm sure I drank it for colds sometimes too. I remember drinking this for nausea because I would always ask why I couldn't just drink the soda with the fizz still in it, and Mom would say the fizz upsets your stomach more. Now, I know that several studies have come out since then, disputing the effectiveness of flat soda and even claiming that it might do more harm than good. But we didn't know that at the time, and it always made me feel better, even if it was just the placebo effect.

Campbell's chicken noodle soup. Chicken noodle soup is classic sick food, and when it came to soup, we were strictly a Campbell's family.

Did you have any special "sick foods" when you were a kid? I'd love to hear about them. But not right now, though...I'm off to make myself a bowl of instant mashed potatoes.

Sniffle sniffle,
E