The Perfect Menu For The Day

It’s those winter days where you feel you haven’t slept right after waking up after eight hours of sleep. A blocked nose and sore throats are your only companions for the day. Once these symptoms show up, it doesn’t take very long for them to turn into full blown cold and fever, keeping you in bed for two-three days. On such days, tomato soup is your saviour. The right food will help you feel better and get well soon. Some foods help alleviate sore throat while some take care of headaches.

While you’re sick, your body needs hydration. Drinking water or cold water hurts your sore throat and you don’t feel thirsty often. In such times, drinking warm liquids really helps. You could go soup or broth. Broth is an excellent way to hydrate your body and add some nutrients while you’re at it. At home, mothers insist on having boiled lentil broth or even rice broth because that way, it makes cooking for the rest of the house easier. The other members can have boiled moong or matki while you have the warm broth that decongests your chest and soothes your sore throat. Ginger and garlic are rich in antioxidants. Ayurveda and lot of grandmothers suggest eating raw ginger and garlic everyday to keep all the health problems at bay. While this may definitely help fight cold and fever, not all of them will be comfortable with this idea. The best way out for those is to consume ginger tea or ginger green tea. Adrak vali chai is everyone’s favourite. You can add garlic to your broth if it helps.

If you’re away from home, you can rely on online grocery shopping while you’re sick. You could order some ready-to-consume chicken soup and some veggies which you can chop and put together for soup. Add some fruits and salads to your cart so that in times when you don’t want to spend a long time in the kitchen, you can just cut and eat. You can always dal rice to make you feel better instantly. Dal khichdi or dal rice goes easy on your stomach and reminds you of home. This feel-good factor makes you feel much better. It involves quick washing and adding them together in a pressure cooker with some light spices and doesn’t take more than 20 minutes. If an upset stomach is what accompanies your cold, then you can opt for curd rice or dahi chawal as fondly called instead of dal khichdi.

Waking up in the morning when you have a cold is one of the toughest things to do. At such times, drinking warm water works wonders. As soon as you brush your teeth, you should wash your face with cold water as it helps with the fever. Then take a glass of warm water, add black pepper powder to it, probably lots of it and then just slowly sip the warm water. Your sore throat and blocked nose will thank you after this.