Feed a cold... Starve a fever...

This is a photo of me Christmas morning with a fever of 102 (lovely picture I know... does that thermometer make my chins look big?)... Now 2 months later once again I'm feeling a little blue... but it is not the flu this time... it is a cold. No fever... just that crappy stuffy nose-chapped lips-sore throat kind of a thing... So last night I started thinking... Is it... Feed a fever starve a cold? or feed a cold and starve a fever? I couldn't remember so I looked it up on my handy dandy computer and low and behold.... I am suppose to feed a cold... Thank God! I was really in need of some chicken noodle soup! And apparently this old folk remedy isn't totally crap. While technically you are not suppose to starve a fever... you naturally experiences a loss of appetite during fevers that is part of your body's natural defense mechanisms... and as for feeding a cold... everybody knows that a good dose of chicken soup will have you feeling better in no time(but chicken soup lore is a post for another day). Check out Dukehealth.org for more about this common wives tale.

Since feeding is what this blog is all about I'll share with you just exactly how I fed my cold. I made a pot of good old fashioned chicken noodle soup and I baked a batch of beer bread. The soup had chicken in it of course... but it could easily be made vegetarian by using vegetable broth and substituting extra chickpeas for the chicken.

Chicken Soup

Cook 3 breasts of chicken in 4 C. of broth (veggie or chicken) and 2 C. water. While that is cooking you can saute 3 ribs of celery (chopped), 2 carrots (sliced), one small onion (diced) and 6 garlic cloves (mined)... pause for one moment to reflect on the many ways I just indicated that you should cut up your vegetables and then move on to the next step.

Once the chicken is fully cooked remove it from from the broth and cut it into small bits... return it to the broth along with the sauteed vegetables. Add a can of drained chickpeas (optional) and some fresh herbs ( I used rosemary since it is one of the only herbs that survived the recent freeze). Add about 8 oz of noodles in the last 15 minutes of cooking time... and salt and pepper to taste... mmmm Soup is good food!

While soup was cooking I made up a batch of beer bread rolls...

Beer Bread

Sift together 3 cups of flour, 3 t. baking powder, 1 1/2 t. salt, and 3 T. sugar...then slowly add the beer. I also added some minced rosemary and a couple of cloves of minced garlic to the mix.

After that you just plop globs of dough into a greased muffin tin... bake at 350 for about 40-45 minutes and wah-la.... beer bread. My family wasn't too fond of the bread. It had a bitter taste to it... I could have either been the type of beer I used or possibly the rosemary.... I will experiment further and let you know what I come up with.


If you are unfortunate enough to have a cold right now I hope that you can at least enjoy feeding it.

Jenn