OMG Not That! (Otherwise Known As: A No Non-sense Guide To Surviving The Barf Zone)

I love spring. At least, I love this spring. It's sunny, warmer, and the flowers are so pretty. Almost nothing could ruin all of this for me. Except this. That phone call you get from your kids school...

"Mrs. Horsley, Your son is ill and needs to come home. He just threw up everywhere." 

Sigh. I don't even have the words to adequately describe the cascade of emotions that triggers. There's horror, empathy, panic (for the kid. I mean, wth? He was fine this morning. Why is he now projectiling food from himself?), dread, anxiety (for yourself and the complete blind fear that you too will end up hugging the porcelain throne and wretching your own guts out, but no one else is going to come along and clean up after you. No. You'll have the fun of that job as well). 

After getting him home, cleaned up and trying to contain the impulse to slather myself in soap/disinfectant every time I touched him, my brain started spinning over what I could do to help him get better. He was obviously running a fever but I'm no rookie. I've been to this rodeo before. Never give a child who's been hurling any kind of fever medicine right off the bat. Test the waters to see what they can hold down so you don't have to clean sticky barf goo off everything. 

My first go to used to be water but I've begun using Coconut water instead. I've been using VitaCoco and the kids seem to like it. I keep a box of it in the fridge most of the time. 

{image from amazon.co.uk}

"Hydrate naturally - 100% natural

Like sticking a straw in a coconut

Packed with naturally occurring electrolytes with 20 times the potassium of leading sports drink

Contains more potassium than two bananas - don't tell the monkeys

The beauty of one ingredient"

If that's a winner and sticks around in the tummy, I typically head on over to banana town. The beauty of bananas are how they taste just about the same coming up as they did going down. If the banana is happy kicking it in the belly without making a second appearance, then we move on to fever medicine. 

After watching my kid look like death warmed over and being unable to really break his fever even with various fever medicines, I couldn't help it. I started racking my brain for other helpful stuff. That's when I remembered Gwen's Ginger Tea.

 {Gwen's Image. You should totally visit Gwen's site. She's killing it with the food stuffs ya'll.}

I added some variation to it to try and get a little more Chinese medicine love action into it. I sliced up 1 whole stalk of lemongrass (good for fevers) into the mix, crushed some fresh mint, and a little agave syrup to sweeten the deal for the kid. The adults liked it so much we added 1 sliced chili to kick things up a notch. It was great to see my kids color start looking more normal and after sipping it for an hour he was finally hungry and wanting to eat. That was such a huge relief. I'd been trying to get him to eat all day and had been failing miserably. Ginger is supposed to do more than soothe the tummy and aid digestion. It stimulates the appetite. 

Even better, I got a second use out of the ginger tea mix and used it to help me season some carrot soup instead of just throwing it all away. You can always keep the kick of the ginger down in the carrot soup by holding back some of the mix or adding some extra cream. 

Carrot Soup

800 g Carrots

1 onion

3 cloves of garlic

1 vegetable bouillon cube

12 cups of water

2 tbsp Italian seasoning

1 tbsp Cinnamon

1 tbsp Butter

Dash of cloves

Dash of cardamom

Dash of nutmeg

600 ml (21.1 fl oz) Extra Thick Double Cream (Heavy cream)

Left over ginger tea mix

salt (to taste)

Rough chop your carrots, garlic and onion, place in a large stock pot and cover with water. Add your seasonings, butter, ginger tea grounds and boil till carrots are tender. Add cream and blend. Serve with your favorite crusty bread and butter. 

My kids loved dipping their bread into this soup and the sick one is starting to look human again. 

Do you have any favorite tricks to deal with the "praying to the porcelain Gods" moments?