Things I chomp on when sick: Oxtail Soup

So particularly when I've got the flu apparently I tend to feel exactly what it feels like to have an inflammatory response. You hear all the time about how omega-3 fatty acids are great anti-inflammatory agents that are supposed to help you recover and keep your joints feeling healthy... but I had the singular experience these last few days of watching the rise and fall of my temperature and the corresponding "inflamed" feeling running through the rest of my body.

With my temp at 99.8 I felt uncomfortable, achey, but still able to get up and move around. At around 102 though I actually felt myself become almost swollen in my joints and very rigid. That was about the point when I would start to hope that one of my brothers would get my icepack from the freezer for me.

It's been said before (many, many, many times by people much wittier than I) that inflammation is the enemy to health. Inflammation immediately following an injury seems to generally a good and necessary response in the process of healing but prolonged inflammation seems to cause all kinds of festering problems in the body (athlesclerosis is a prolonged inflammation or the blood vessels which creates the home for blood clots which give rise to stroke/poor blood pressure/and a host of other issues, joints that are iced are usually brought to cooler temperatures to still movement and stress in a particular area for a bit so that fresh blood can then flush back into the area).

I've got a lot more to learn about the many ways inflammation reaks havoc on the body when not held in check... but one thing I know is... soup feels good... and soup with anti-inflammatory omega-3 fatty acids feels EVEN better (I upped my dosage of o-3s while I was sick and tried to eat only seafood, vegetables, and dark fruits to get myself better). After I sleep - the difference is palpable. I feel healed. It's like magic. Alakazam.

Anyway...here's what I ate for pretty much the whole day yesterday:

OXTAIL SOUP

Where oxtail is really just the tail of a cow...but ox obviously sounds way cooler. The fat of the bone of the tail is stewed in the broth of the soup and that fat is MARROW which is some of the coolest stuff ever and is very omega-3 dense.

1. Stew oxtails forever and ever - so much so that other people in the household demand to know what is taking up a burner.

2. Chuck in onion and greens you have lying around (my mom used swiss chard which is an excellent idea and one of my favorite dark green veg).

3. Let that stew and add some spices. Up to you but when I'm sick I like sorta spicy stuff to clear my sinuses...so my mom put in some cayenne pepper paste.

4. Eat. and Drink. Cause the broth is dang good.

You can find out more about bone marrow in recipes and the health benefits here.

And you can read this little account of eating roasted bone marrow from Anthony Bourdain (the traveler eating guy from The Travel Channel) here. I want his job kinda.

In other news...

THINGS I HAVE WASTED (CONSCIOUSLY) HOURS OF MY LIFE WATCHING IN THE LAST FEW DAYS:

1. The Extended Version of the Lord of the Rings minus the 2nd part of the Two Towers (the disc was lost) and pretty much 1/2 of the very last disc of Return of the King (which was skipping but I was kinda napping so it didn't matter).

2. Madagascar....2 (but I've never seen 1?) I <3>

3. Every possible episode of anything Chef Ramsay does. I think Meghan put it this way, "I like angry English men." It's probably true...I did always love perfunctory English writing best.

4. A few episodes of the following: Survivorman, Iron Chef, and Barefoot Contessa.

5. Korean soap operas that made absolutely no sense at all. Lots of screaming. Lots of eating. Lots of non-sensical honor issues. Who's family does that sound like...

Somehow with all of those shows about food I managed to lose 10lbs. while sick. I am probably weak now. I think I'm realizing I need to train less - rest more. Hmm...