New Tradition: Healthy Meals with Friends

I've implemented a new tradition with my friends. Once a month, we’re going to gather at someone’s place and cook a healthy dinner. Each person brings the ingredients for one dish which gets shared with the rest of the group. Leftovers can get taken home by all and serve as at least one lunch for everyone that week. For this first one, my roommate and I got all of the leftovers because we went to see a movie after dinner and we didn't want to let the food sit unrefrigerated in the car. Of course then my roommate went out of town for work, so really I kept all of the leftovers… works for me. I got at least four meals out of the leftovers, and still had another three meals portioned out that I didn't eat - I need SOME variety in my life.

I have the most dietary restrictions of the group, so everyone caters to me… just kidding, but not really. We've also got one girl who doesn't eat any meat except for chicken and another who doesn't have gluten or added sugars (she’s practically paleo), so our meal plan is roughly:

• 1 chicken-based entree (i.e., stir-fry, chicken tikka masala, etc.)
• 2 vegetable-based dishes (i.e., ratatouille, roasted asparagus, sweet potato, tomato basil soup, etc.)
• side salad
• fruit for dessert

February 15th was the first night we did this and we had three people attend. I’d say 3-4 is a good number if all of the chefs need to prep and cook their dishes. More people probably would have led to some collisions

My roommate made a Spicy Sweet Potato Soup, with roughly the following ingredients. She tweaked this recipe to suit my needs and her dislike of chicken broth/stock.

3 large sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed

1 tablespoon ghee

1 onion, sliced

2 cloves garlic, sliced

4 cups water or chicken stock

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

2 tablespoons grated fresh ginger root, or 2 tsp ginger powder

1/4 cup smooth almond butter

2 tsp lime juice

1 tsp salt

If you divide this soup into 8 servings, each serving is 106 kcal, 14 g carbs, 5 g fat, 3 g protein, 5 g sugar, 3 g fiber, 168 mg sodium, 260 mg potassium, 165% vitamin A, 18% vitamin C, 5% calcium, 5% iron.

My other friend made a spicy veggie stir-fry, and I whipped up NomNomPaleo’s Braised Chicken with Artichokes and Pearl Onions.

We scarfed down our dinner before I thought to take a photo of the nicely plated meals, so here’s a shot of one of the portioned meals I had throughout the week.

Creamy Tomato Basil Soup

Last Sunday, I went into work for 7.5 hours. On my way home, I was thinking about what I had at home and what I could make for my meals for the week. My mom had mentioned having soup earlier in the day, which made me think about tomato soup. I went through the pantry inventory stored in my mind, and decided I wanted tomato basil soup. I had everything at home that I would need, excluding the fresh basil, which I had to go to two stores to find. Ridiculous! Anyways, here's what I did, and honey, it tastes good.

Creamy Tomato Basil Soup

1 15-oz can of diced tomatoes, no salt added

1 15-oz can of crushed tomatoes, no salt added

1 12-oz can of tomato sauce

1 8-oz can of tomato paste

4 cups chicken broth

1 1/5 tsp ghee

1 cup finely diced onion

1 cup finely diced carrots

1 clove garlic, smashed and minced

~5 leaves fresh basil

1 tsp oregano

1 pinch sea salt

fresh-ground black pepper

1/2 cup coconut milk

Place all of your ingredients, excluding the coconut milk, into a crock pot. Stir, then cover. Set on low for 8 hours. After cooking, use an immersion blender to break down the ingredients into smaller pieces (if desired). Stir in the coconut milk and serve with a chiffonade of basil. Enjoy!

I just happened to have 5 different types of canned tomato products at home. You could use one of the jumbo cans of crushed tomatoes and use that in place of the 2 15-oz cans of diced/crushed tomatoes. Also, if you like your tomato soups to have a little chunk to them, stick with diced tomatoes instead of crushed tomatoes or the tomato sauce. It's what you make of it, so have fun.

Pumpkin Sausage Soup

In honor of the first week of October happening this week, I've decided to do a week of pumpkin recipes. Someone forgot to tell Texas weather that it's fall, but the spirit of fall is in the air. Grocery stores are displaying tons of pumpkin desserts, Halloween stores are open, and Christmas decorations are already on sale. But then again, I've seen Christmas decorations in stores since June. Anyways, pumpkin recipes will be happening for the week. I'm pretty excited, but since I'm cooking for one, and apparently never cook small batches of anything, I'm going to be eating pumpkin at EVERY meal this week. I would say that I'm concerned about getting tired of pumpkin, but I LOVE pumpkin, so I think we're safe.

Pumpkin Sausage Soup

2 Tbls olive oil

1 pound sweet Italian sausage (bulk if you can find it)

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 onion, diced

1.5 Tbls sage leaves, chiffonade

3/4 cup white wine (I used Pinot Grigio)

1 1/4 cup chicken broth, homemade if you have it

1 bay leaf

1 cup pureed pumpkin

1/2 cup coconut milk

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Salt and pepper, to your taste

1. Heat 1 Tbls of olive oil in large skillet over medium heat. Once the olive oil is hot, add the sausage. If you couldn't find mild (a.k.a. "sweet") Italian sausage, and instead have the sausage itself, make a light cut lengthwise along the sausage, then fold flip the sausage inside how, keeping hold of the casing. Use your hands to break up the sausage to smaller chunks.

2. Cook the sausage for a few minutes, until it's thoroughly cooked.

3. Transfer the sausage to paper towel, to allow the fat to be drained.

4. Heat another 1 Tbls of olive oil to a skillet and toss in the garlic and onions. Cook for 5 minutes until onions are soft.

5. Now add the sage, bay leaf, and wine to the pan. Cook for about 5 minutes to allow the wine to reduce. (To chiffonade the sage, roll up the leaves, and then make small slices from the rolled edge.)

6. Mix in the chicken broth and pumpkin puree. Once the concoction starts to bubble, reduce the heat to low.

7. Stir in the coconut milk and the sausage, and cook for 5-10 minutes to allow the soup to thicken.

21DSD Day 8 - Chemo

Well folks, I'm back in Atl to be with my parents for this next round of chemo. Yesterday we just took things easy. We took the dogs for two walks, finished one puzzle, and watching Rise of the Guardians and Resident Evil: Resurrection. I really enjoyed the first one. I thought it was super cute and funny. Resident Evil was a bit of a let down though. I've been a faithful Resident Evil since I watched the second film during my senior year of high school, probably slightly becasue of the movie itself, but mainly because of the good memories I associate with it. (Yes, you heard that right. Zombie movie = good times. I'm weird, right?) Anywho, we stayed busy, while still taking it easy. I whipped up some steak and roasted Brussels sprouts for dinner.

And got to use my parents' handy Wustof Silverpoint steak knives. Yep, they copied me because of how much I raved about my set.

Today we spent about 4 hours at the facility, which is a lot less than what we expected. The doctors started the chemo drip slowly (50 mL/h, then 100, 150, 200, and 300 after 30-minute intervals) in order to watch for any signs of allergic reaction, which of course kicked in after about 45 minutes. The allergic reaction we got today was a "weird-feeling," slightly itchy throat. We notified the nurse (Vanessa is really helpful), and they paused the chemo and started up a steroid drip to stop the reaction. The doctor basically told the nurse to use whatever drugs (steroids, anti-nausea, anti-inflammatory, analgesic, etc.) she thought we needed, considering all of the issues we encountered with the supposedly "nicer" chemo drug. After the steroid we progressed without a hitch.

We then headed home to start a new puzzle, (maybe you can tell that we like puzzles?), and eat a late lunch. We brought some food to snack on while we were at the doctor's office, but it didn't count as a meal. I brought a sugar-free chicken-andouille sausage, some proscuitto, and a mixture of almonds, pistachios, pecans, and pumpkin seeds.

After about an hour working on the puzzle, we took a nap break because some light-headedness and tiredness had set in. We checked temperature and blood pressure just to make sure there wasn't any fever, which is a concern if it goes over 100 F, or anything like that. I headed back to the puzzle after placing a trash can next to the bed just in case and leaving the yorkies in the room to "keep an eye on things" (Yes. The two 8-lb dogs are worriers and will stick close by when they know something isn't quite right.) A couple hours later, we were pulling together some dinner before calling it an early night, with some Benadryl to hopefully prevent any other possible side effects.

In summary, things are going well so far. Fingers crossed that the good continues!

And just to leave you with some comfort food, here's a garden vegetable soup recipe I made last week:

Garden Vegetable Soup

4 cups vegetable broth

1 cup tomato puree

3/4 cup water

1 14-oz can diced tomatoes

1 14-oz. can tomato puree

2 cups carrots, sliced

2 cups celery, sliced

1 red pepper, sliced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 Tbls olive oil

1 small yellow onion, diced

1. Toss everything into a large stock pot. Heat over medium-high heat on the stove for 2 hours.

Man, again with the one-step recipes. Awesome, right?

Chemo - Part 9 - Day 8

This morning I woke up at 5 am to get ready to drive back to Texas. I took the dogs outside and continued to pack up my car. At around 5:45 am, my parent walked into the hallway and was not looking so good, so we made the decision for me to stay in Atlanta for an extra day. I brought my suitcase back into the house, headed up to my old bedroom, and climbed back into bed. I didn't go back to sleep though. Maybe because of the lack of sleep, we haven't done too much today. I've been trying to catch up on work emails from the past week. Unfortunately my mailbox is so full that I can't even send emails. No good.

On the bright side, today was better than the previous two days. Things get worse as the day goes on though. Maybe it's just because of getting tired throughout the day, despite a few naps/lie-downs. We did go for a short walk today (just part of the way down our street), so that's really good! And we've been pushing fluids today (I even managed to gulp down over 5 L of water), which is almost always recommended by doctors for well, almost everything.

I was out of the house for a little while this evening. I met up with my friend Darby for gluten-free pizza at Mellow Mushroom (Yes, this is the place I rave about every once and a while!). Then, I swung by LF's house to return the dress that she let me borrow for Steeplechase on Saturday. In the two hours that I was gone, we hit a fever of 101.5 F and were applying ice packs and cold washcloths to cool down. When I last checked about 5 minutes ago, the temperature was down to 98.7 F.

The plan is to return to Texas in the morning. So let's hope all goes well tonight. And to finish off, here's part of the results from my day of cooking and cleaning on Sunday...

Chicken Broth
2 chicken carcasses (from 5-lb chickens)
1 onion, cut into eighths, and layers peeled apart
5 carrots, scrubbed, peeled, and cut into ~ 2" pieces
4 stalks celery, scrubbed and cut into ~2" pieces
10 sprigs fresh thyme
2 bay leaves
4 cloves garlic, peeled, but whole
sprinkle with black pepper
water



1. If you have a whole roasted chicken, pull the meat from the bone and save for a different recipe. It's fine if some meat remains on the bones. Place the bones in your slow-cooker.

2. Toss in the chopped veggies and seasonings.

3. Fill water up to the brim of the slow cooker. Cover and set on low for 8 hours. Stir occasionally.

4. Use a large strainer to remove the bones, veggies, and herbs. Then pour through a cheese cloth to remove all of the little remaining bits.

5. Cool in the fridge before attempting to freeze.

Chicken broth is good for constipation, dehydration, fatigue, nausea, sore mouth, and difficulty swallowing. It's easy for your body to digest and is generally rich in minerals since it's made from bones. For that reason, it also provides iron.

Chemo - Part 8 - Day 7

Let's start with an update on the chemo recovery. Things aren't going so well right now. The bone pain has spread, so there's a constant whole-body ache. Additionally, we had a short period of nausea such that we were positioning a trash can close by, as well as placing an ice pack on the back of the neck as well as a cold washcloth on the face. It passed, but came with cold sweats so that a fresh shirt needed to be grabbed and we layered on two blankets and used a heating pad to warm up. Nausea, bone pain, and headaches are terrible on their own. Combine them and it's misery.

One of the families that lives on my parents' street is vegetarian, so when they decided to help out my parents by providing food, they provided vegetarian dishes. When my parent had surgery back in January, our neighbor made the following soup. My parents had told her how I enjoy cooking, so she provided the recipe and all of the necessary ingredients. Because of the black beans used for protein instead of meat, this dish isn't Paleo, but it is a good option when recovering from chemo. This recipe comes from The Voluptuous Vegan, page 36. There are a few differences based on the proportions that I used, but it's basically the same

Colombian Black Bean Soup

2.5 cups dried Michigan black beans, soaked overnight

1 jalapeno pepper

1 dried chipotle pepper or habanero chile

6 cups water

2 tsp cumin seeds

2 Tbls olive oil

1/2 green pepper. finely diced

1 stalk celery, finely diced

1 onion, finely diced

4 garlic cloves, minced

3 Tbls freshly squeezed orange juice

3 Tbls freshly squeeze lime juice

Salt and pepper

Cilantro (optional)

1. Drain the soaked beans. Put in a large pot with the peppers and water. Boil over high heat, then lower the heat and simmer for an hour, until beans are tender.

2. Remove the pepper. Remove 1 1/2 cups of beans and 1 cup of the cooking liquid to a blender, blending until smooth. Return the purée to the pot.

3. Toast the cumin seeds in a small, dry skillet over medium heat, stirring constantly, until fragrant. Grind the seeds to a powder with a mortar and pestle or electric spice grinder.

4. Warm the olive oil in a medium pan. Saute the onions and garlic over medium-low heat for 7 minutes, until the onions are soft. Add the cumin, green pepper, and celery, cooking for 5 more minutes until smooth.

5. Transfer the sautéed veggies to the pot. Add 1 1/2 tsp salt and a little bit of black pepper. Simmer uncovered for 15 minutes.

6. Stir in orange and lime juice. Season to taste.

7. Serve with chopped cilantro and orange and lime pieces.

Chemo - Part 1 - Prep

One of my family members was recently diagnosed with Hairy Cell Leukemia (HCL). HCL is a rare form of leukemia where the B lymphocytes accumulate in the bone marrow. Because of this accumulation, the production of white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets are hindered. What does this mean? As a result of the poor production of blood cells, your immune response suffers, as well as the oxygen flow throughout your body, so you're more likely to have shortness of breath and you're more likely to pick up infections. In summary, cancer sucks.

The diagnosis left us all feeling a bit on the helpless side; there's really not much you can do besides figure out a plan to knock the cancer out of your system and be supportive. I'm still not entirely sure what "being supportive" means. If you find out, let me know. My method of being supportive was 1) trying to be a good listener, 2) researching HCL, 3) finding HCL forums to read about others' experiences, and 4) reading cancer cookbooks to figure out what the best foods are to eat during chemo. I swear the librarian gave me a shocked and pitying look when I picked up five large "What to Eat When You Have Cancer Cookbooks." But hey, what's a girl to do, but take advantage of my local library? Anyways, I've been spending a lot of my spare time flipping through these cookbooks for the last couple weeks, trying to get some ideas for when chemo started. One thing to remember is to THOROUGHLY clean all fresh fruit and vegetables to remove any chemicals or germs left on the skin.

Of course I wanted to be with my family for this first round of chemo, so I made the ~12 hours drive from Texas back to Atlanta, arriving in Atlanta on Friday evening. My dog Riley welcomed me back with a beer, which of course I didn't drink...

As the family's last meal at a restaurant for the next couple weeks (avoiding crowded places while your immune system is down is a good idea), we went to Longhorn Steakhouse, where all of us ended up getting the same thing: Bourbon Bacon-wrapped Sirloin. (Apparently we have similar tastes, though we each got a different level of doneness: me with medium, and my parents with medium-well, and well done).

Saturday morning, we started our preparations. For my family of allergy sufferers (and closet Obsessive-Compulsives), that meant that we spent the next two days cleaning. I think my family's house has been scrubbed to within an inch of its life. We vacuumed and washed all of the rugs and rug backings, swept, mopped, and polished the hardwood floors, dusted the china cabinet, dusted all of the decorative Scandinavian figurines we have displayed around the house, shook out doilies, dusted the vases and teapots my parents have above our cabinets, cleaned the blinds, moved the TV stand to vacuum the rug underneath (which hasn't seen the light of day in a while), washed the curtains, cleaned the inside AND outside of the windows, Swiffered the floors under the beds, and basically dusted ALL surfaces. I've always been a bit OCD about my apartment being clean, but this brought the cleaning to a whole new level.

My break from cleaning on Saturday was a trip to the grocery store. I planned out a few meals to make based on the foods that my parents currently had at home and picked up the remaining ingredients I needed as well as a few other meats to cook. I've already made a batch of bone broth, with some beef bones that the kind gentleman at Whole Foods sawed up right before me. After chilling in the fridge post-slow cooker, I removed the fat, but this batch stayed broth-like instead of going gelatinous like my last bone broth.

It's basically the same as before, but I'll post the ingredients again:

3 lbs beef bone (pasture-raised if possible)

1 onion, roughly chopped

4 carrots, thoroughly scrubbed, peeled, and roughly chopped

4 stalks celery, thoroughly scrubbed, peeled, and roughly chopped

2 bay leaves

2 Tbls apple cider vinegar

Salt and pepper

Everything gets combined in a slow-cooker. Set on low for 10 hours. Wake up in the morning and strain the resulting broth with a strainer first and then cheesecloth. If you don't have cheesecloth, I highly recommend investing in some for the purposes of making broth.

Bone broth is supposed to be good to have during chemo if you suffer from anemia, constipation, dehydration, fatigue, nausea, sore mouth, and difficulty swallowing due to the treatment. It also serves as a good base for other soups.

Bone Broth Follow Up

Here's the nice layer of fat that I pulled off of the cooled Slow Cooker Bone Broth that I made the other week:

And here's what the gelatinous bone broth looks like:

A couple tips for those of you intending to make the bone broth and freeze it for later:

• Don't fill the container all of the way to the top. The bone broth, like water, expands when frozen.*
• If you're going to use Mason jars, don't fill up all of the way to the top, and allow the bone broth to freeze before putting on the lid.

How do I know this? Well, I apparently filled my Mason jars too full, so the bone broth managed to pop the tops off of the jar and in one case, broke the jar. Cue failure music now. So learn from my mistakes, people.

*H₂O in its frozen form has a hexagonal crystalline structure because of hydrogen bonding between different water molecules. Each water molecule is hydrogen bonded to 4 other water molecules. This structure makes ice less dense than its liquid form, a.k.a. why ice floats and why 1 mL of liquid water would take up less space than 1 mL of frozen water.

Slow-Cooker Bone Broth

I was browsing through a cookbook this past weekend and came across a recipe for bone broth, which stated that it's a good option for cancer patients going through chemo. This is not that recipe, however it got me thinking about making bone broth. It's on my list of foods to try. So I figured, why not? Here goes...

Slow-Cooker Bone Broth

3 carrots, peeled and chopped
3 celery stalks, chopped
1 white onion, roughly chopped
8 cloves garlic, smashed
4 lb beef bones (grass-fed)
2 bay leaves
sea salt
2 Tbls apple cider vinegar
water

Toss your chopped veggies and garlic into your crock pot.

Layer the beef bones on top.

Add in the bay leaves, and a few shakes/twists of sea salt. Drizzle the vinegar over the bones, then add water until all of the ingredients are covered. Set your crock pot on low for 10 hours.

After cooking, strain the broth, and dispose of the solids.

Pour your broth into a large container and place in the fridge. After letting it cool overnight/throughout the day, remove the solid layer of fat that forms. From here you can freeze the broth, it'll stay good for a few months, or eat within the next week or so.

As a FYI, the remaining broth under the fat should be gelatinous. It's basically beef jello. The gelatinous bits of meat really freak me out, reference my post here for how well I handled ripping chicken meat off of the bones... it was all because of the jelly-looking bits.

Whole 30 - Tomato and Beef Stew

I'm not sure whether this qualifies as a soup or as stew. I generally think of stews as thicker than this one, but I think of soups as thinner than this one. Sooo, I'm going with a stew. Call it what you will.

Tomato and Beef Stew
1 lb beef for stew chunks
1 - 28 oz can of peeled whole tomatoes
1 - 6 oz can of tomato puree
1 cup mushrooms, sliced
1 cup chopped spinach, frozen
1/2 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried parsley
3/4 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp pepper
a few shakes of salt
(optional) a little bit of your own blood... Just kidding. I happened to slice my finger open while trying to find another fast way of chopping onions, but I promise, no blood went into this stew...

Chop up all of your ingredients. Put into the crockpot. Stir. Set for 8 hours on low. Check back 8 hours later. Eat. Enjoy.

Today, I ate a piece of my Italian Greens Frittata (recipe tomorrow) with avocado for breakfast, had nuts and a Lemon Pie Larabar for lunch, a banana for a snack, and almond butter and a Cashew Cookie Larabar for dinner. Too many nuts. Way too many. And I used myfitnesspal.com to track the nutritional values of my food, and my "dinner" ended up being ~500 more calories than if I had eaten a cup of my stew. Yikes. Darn nuts.

And as a side note to all of you wondering why corn isn't Paleo: Mark's Daily Apple: Corn is not a Vegetable.

P90X - Day 4

Yoga. Oh my gosh. My least favorite of the P90X routines. I know that yoga is supposed to calm the mind or something similar to that, but it doesn't quite work that way. A full 90 minutes of yoga can be exhausting and exhaustingly boring. And when I'm already tired and wanting to go to bed, it really makes me want to crawl back under the covers. I do enjoy the end of the yoga when Tony tells me to do Corpse pose (a.k.a. lay flat on my back and breathe) and then tells me to roll onto my side into the position that I normally sleep in. I finish off yoga feeling calm and ready to go back to sleep, the former of which goes away shortly after getting to work, and the latter is not ideal for waking up in the morning.

It was a later start than I intended, because I fell asleep after my first alarm, despite being half-awake for 10 minutes before my 5:00a.m. alarm went off. So I didn't roll out of bed until 5:30a.m. when alarm #2 sounded. I debated just getting ready for work and skipping yoga, but I knew my schedule for the day and I knew that I would end up not doing yoga at all if I didn't do it yesterday morning.

Here's what I ate yesterday: 

Breakfast (@8a.m.): 1 tbls almond butter, dark chocolate (healthy breakfast? not so much.)

Lunch (@12:30p.m.): Rack of lamb with balsamic glaze, Brussels sprouts, and mixed greens

Snack (@2:30p.m.): Fruit Tray for my birthday celebration at work. Yeah, it's a week late, but I like to keep the celebrations going for as long as possible. I've already gotten a request from one of my friends to have a one-month anniversary celebration of my 25th birthday. I think I may have to oblige. (OMG. I'm 25, how did that happen?)

Dinner (@6p.m.): Chicken and Vegetable Soup
Happy Hour (@7:30p.m.): Gin and tonic

		Goal	with Exercise	Actual
Calories	kcal	1,330	1,612	1,345
Carbs	g	183	221	147
Fat	g	44	53	49
Protein	g	50	60	68
Calcium	g	100	100	22
Fiber	g	15	19	20
Cholesterol	mg	-	-	164
Sodium	mg	-	-	965
Sugars	g	-	-	87

So a random annoyance of mine is when people who are clearly not handicapped, nor have their hands full in any way, decide to use the automatic doors provided for physically disabled individuals. Is there a reason why they can't push or pull the door open by themselves? Are they too weak to open the door? Well, I can recommend some exercises and weight-lifting they can do to improve upon their upper-body strength. I know that the doors at the entrance of my office building are a bit on the heavy side, but they're not that difficult to open. Though I have had co-workers comment to me about how strong I must be to barely break stride in order to open the door. "You must workout a lot." True story. Still I feel that if you are an able-bodied individual, you should stop being so lazy and open your own door. Just saying.

And now for a random tidbit of knowledge: How to get a boy into your room according to Mad Men, Season 1: "The light fixture in my room is out... could you change it for me?" Smooth. I'm sure the poor fellow had no idea (yeah, right...) what was going to happen after that.

The Pitiful Sick

I've been feeling a little under the weather since I got back from my last trip to the beach (a.k.a. the past two weeks). After going for a run this past Tuesday, I got a sore throat and from there the sinus pressure, stuffy nose, and cough has developed. My best guess is that I've come down with a sinus infection. I don't know if any of you have ever felt pressure building behind your cheeks, nose, and eyes, but let me tell you, it's not pleasant. The pressure is so much that it vaguely feels as though my head isn't really my head. It made me think of a balloon that you blow up till it's about to burst. All that's necessary to cause it to pop is a sharp point (kind of similar to the sharp pains in my ears). Poor balloon.

I feel like it should be fall. I think it's the fact that I used to get ever year in the fall that has developed my association between a cold, flu, or sinus infection and autumn. I'm currently watching the Olympics (men's gymnastics to be precise), so I know that it's summertime and not fall; however, I keep expecting cooler temperatures so walking outside into 100F temperatures is a shock. But then again, I'm also wearing sweats and a sweater, and standing with my head over a pot of boiling water. The pot of boiling water is my mom's solution to clearing out my sinuses ("plus it's good for the complexion"). I always hated it because, in case you didn't know, steam gets really hot... and it doesn't feel too pleasant on my face. And since when does 75 degrees cause me to wear sweats in bed and huddle under the covers? Unless my thermometer is broken,my temp is 96.6. Can you get a reverse fever from a cold/sinus infection? Is that possible?

I've been gulping down tea for the past four days. Today, I switched to alternating between sips of chicken broth and water. I have a fondness for Swanson 33% Less Sodium Chicken Broth, which I developed when I had my tonsils removed 3.5 years ago. A cup of the aforementioned broth, heated in the microwave for 46 seconds was perfect for my recovering throat. I don't drink coffee and I'm not a huge fan of tea, so for a couple months after my surgery, my morning hot beverage became chicken broth. Weird, I know. But think about it... don't you love chicken noodle soup?Doesn't it make you feel slightly better? To me, it's as close as I'm going to get to the warm and fuzzy feeling of a doting mother's love and attention. Soooo, I stopped at the grocery store on the way home from work (yes, I went into work on a Saturday), and bought two 48-oz containers of chicken broth. I also grabbed a pound of chicken, some celery, and some carrots. The result was a chicken and vegetable soup. I also bought a Naked Juice Power-C Machine because I figured I needed the extra vitamin C.

Chicken and Vegetable Soup

1 lb chicken breast, chopped

3 Tbls olive oil

2 tsp lemon juice

1 tsp parsley

1 tsp rosemary

1 tsp thyme

1 tsp garlic salt

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

48-oz chicken broth, reduced sodium

1 lb carrots, chopped

1 bunch of celery chopped

1 sweet potato, chopped

salt and pepper, to taste

In a quart size Ziploc bag, mix 2 Tbls olive oil, 2 tsp lemon juice, 1 tsp parsley, 1/2 tsp rosemary, 1/2 tsp thyme, 1/2 tsp garlic salt, and chopped chicken breast. Seal and shake/mold to evenly distribute the marinade. Put in the fridge for 2 hours.

After you've chopped all of the veggies, heat 1 Tbls of olive oil in a pan over medium-low heat. Once hot, add the chicken, season with salt and pepper, and cook thoroughly. After the chicken is cooked, put the chicken, veggies, and chicken broth into a crock pot. Add an extra 1/2 tsp of parsley, rosemary, and thyme, and a 1/4 tsp of cayenne pepper. Set on high for 4 hours. Veggies should be soft once the soup is done cooking.