Rebuilding from long term Lyme can be staggering, there are so many depleted systems to repair. Stamina and strength must be rebuilt. A wonderful lesson of Tick-borne illness is to make Lyme self-care easy when you can.
Cooking Veggies
Healthy digestion of nutrient-rich food is the fuel for rebuilding. Cooking fresh vegetables is on just about every health recovery diet out there. Vegetables are full of antioxidants, low calorie, low inflammation, and add color and variety to your plate. Veggie prep can be a lot of work. I never thought too much about it, but when your hands hurt you got to try and make things easier.
As I recover and can do more, I need to consolidate my food prep time while still enjoying healthy meals. It used to be that cooking was my big job of the day, now it is one of many things I do each day. Comitted as I am to healthy eating for the long term, I am doing more planning and batch cooking to help me use my time efficiently. I need to make my Lyme self-care easy so I have time to live and work.
Make Lyme Self-Care Easy for Nutrient Dense Eating
- Take Out
Find a good local and or organic restaurants in your area. Get to know them to understand if they can make food to your level of clean and healthy. Here are some examples in the Boston area.
- Buy prepared meals that you cook at home.
There are many versions of these delivery service meals, including vegan and organic. Poke around to find one that bumps up your veggie intake and does the shopping and thinking for you. You open the box and follow the recipe card. Everything you need to make a delicious meal is included.
- Batch Cooking
Basically this means cooking a bunch all at once. For instance, on Sunday cook a chicken and roast veggies. Plan to make more than your family can eat in one sitting. Have roast chicken on Sunday, chicken stir fry on Monday and Salad with chicken Monday night. Blend the leftover roast veggies together as a soup.
- Repeat Lunch & Dinner a simple form of batch cooking. Make enough for lunch and dinner then just warm it up.
- Supermarket Support
Pre-cut veggies are available in many grocery stores. That is one way to make things easier, but they generally are not organic. Precut veggies often cost 2 to 1 or more over their unsliced counterparts, so most often I cut, chop and grate myself.
Cutting Veggies The Straw That Broke The Camels Back
For Saint Patrick’s day, our family gets together for a traditional boiled dinner. Now that my mom is gone, my sister and I do most of the cooking. I prepped cabbage, carrots, onions and turnips for 20 people. My hands really hurt after all that cutting and chopping.
I realized I need to be smarter in my veggie prep. Get the right tools and training to do it efficiently and safely. This week I took a fun hands on class on vegetable preparation to help me. The class was at The Kitchen Place at the local mall.
Let The Knife Do The Work
Wüsthof America a German knife company hosted the cutting vegetables class. They also have great demos on line. One of the things the instructor said was”Let the knife do the work.” This was a novel concept to me. I had been using two small knives for everything I chopped and doing the work to make up for the knife.
Choosing the knife to fit the job, you might think is just a way to sell more knives, but they suggest a couple to effectively do 90% of the work. Well-honed sharpened knives that cut through raw turnip like butter and make thin beautiful slices of collard greens are just the ticket. I spent 45 minutes chopping with no pain.
No question in my mind that Lyme disease and coinfections are a great teacher. I am in an herb club, I blog and became an Ayurvedic Health Coach, all driven by a desire to heal and help others. Even as I recover new learning and surprises still happen, the latest being knife skills. Always be safe when using sharp knives!
The purpose of this blog is to share and educate on Lyme disease recovery strategies. The information provided on this website is not a substitute for professional medical care, treatment or advice. All the material here is for information purposes only. Always share strategy and work with your health care team.