I'm sick.

I’m sick. I hate to admit it, it feels like I’m admitting defeat. I’ve been in denial for about a week but I’m not resigned to the fact that I have a flaming red throat and feel like I’ve been swallowing saw blades for the last few days. I’m coughing, aching and sneezing.

The weather has kindly made it easy for me to stay indoors, wind and rain make it difficult to sand bench-tops outside so instead I’ve watched movies and made soup and read books. I must admit it has been pretty indulgent.

I’ve eaten too, lots and lots of soup. Here’s my recipe for a yummy chunky vegetable soup. Apparently grapefruit contains about 33mg of Vitamin C per 100 grams which isn’t as good as lemons or oranges but there seems to be more grapefruit trees laden with fruit than there are orange or lemon trees at the moment. My dad has always preached to us about the pitfalls of drinking store bought juice with such gems as “how many oranges did it take to make that glass of juice?” And then before you could even answer he’d add  “You wouldn’t eat that many oranges in one go would you?” And that’s a good point. However, I can answer dad’s first question with “Two”. I juiced two small grapefruit added a teaspoon of manuka honey and topped it with water to make a lovely drink. Whole fruit is great and I eat a fair bit of fruit but, partly thanks to dad’s warning, I don’t drink much juice. I drink a lot of tea and tisanes and plain old possum-poo infused Hunua roof water. I drank my first sip of grapefruit juice I was reminded of the first two days of my slippery slide to getting sick and how my throat was horribly sour every time I swallowed for two days before the pain started. Perhaps if I’d had a glass of grapefruit juice back then I could have combated it. The juicer that Sam bought me last year on my year off from conscious self sufficiency seemed like an odd gift back then but now I’m thrilled that he purchased it, more for its vintage appeal than anything else. My idea of a traditional juicer is the pointy thing that you strengthen your wrist twisting the juice out of a halved piece of citris. This new juicer from Sam is like a giant garlic crusher with a little spout, it is very efficient and feels very therapeutic.