Y’all, I have officially hacked being sick.
This is my first year working at an elementary school and those kidoes spread SO MANY germs, so I am getting a lot of practice at how to survive being sick on a budget and without help 🥴👍
For me, the biggest problem when I’m not feeling well is getting enough to eat. I don’t have much in the way of natural bodily reserves, so missing one meal is enough to make me feel sluggish, two and I’m unsteady on my feet, three and I might not be able to stand up without seeing stars. The longer I wait, the more difficult it’s going to be for me to make or obtain my next meal.
This is a massive problem when I’m sick and have little to no spoons and/or feel too nauseous to eat normally. Last time I got sick, I got over the original virus in three days but then had to spend another four recovering my strength and energy because I was too malnourished to drive to work.
At last, I have found the answer,
This time, the moment I started feeling off, I went to the grocery store and got everything I needed to cover my nutritional bases: vegetables for the vitamins, cheep beef for protein and iron, and potatoes for carbohydrates, plus some berries for extra vitamins and because they’re a safe food for when I’m feeling nauseous.
Went home, threw everything in a pot (except the berries) and made an absurd amount of stew. Tada! Food covered! For a week! All I had to do was pull the tub out of the fridge, spoon some into a bowl, microwave it, and eat however much I felt up to as often as I could. No nutritional math required! None of the ‘crud, I need to figure out something with protein in it for my next meal because I’ve only eaten frozen peas today’ or ‘I’m getting sicker from lack of vitamins because I’ve been trying to survive solely off of cheese casadeas.’ One meal, that’s got everything I need in it, that I can eat for breakfast lunch and dinner for as long as I need. No, it was not the most particularly flavorful or robustly seasoned stew, but it didn’t need to be. It just needed to be palatable enough that I could eat it for a couple days without getting too sick of it.
It doesn’t need to be stew, but if you, like me, have a hard time eating well while sick, I’d highly recommend making a big batch of something that’s got everything you need in it. It can be fucking cookies as long as you can find a way to sneak protein, vitamins, and carbs into them, and won’t mind munching on them for the next couple days.