This is Hurlee McWretcherton reporting semi-alive from Canada's East Coast!
Today in our riveting news, we'll discuss just how sick a person can get, and have to give up her super-awesome keto regimen for toast, soup, toast, cereal, and hot milk BY THE GALLON.
Thats right, no sooner did I post last week's "Hey, look at ME!" blog, that a stomach bug invaded and let's just say it stormed the castle.
I was not feeling 100% on Tuesday, and was forced to skip a lovely morning of hymn singing, and by Wednesday, I was forced to sing into the porcelain throne. And not well, I might add.
And without getting toooo dramatic, the thought of bacon, even 5 days later?
Nooooooooooooo.
So, between the tummy spinning one way, the head spinning another, and the general malaise of it all, I know that there was only one thing I was going to have a hope in heck of keeping down.
Okay, sorry, two.
No wait, three.
Hot soup, hot milk with vanilla, and toast.
Things in that list NOT compatible with my ketogenic menu?
Hot soup, hot milk with vanilla, and toast.
Annnnnnnnnnyway, a few days of toast after 10 weeks without it taught me something very important.
Wheat gives me a whopping headache.
Now just chill on the whole gluten thing. Food allergies are a big thing in my family. BIG. As my #2 son said the other day, "What fruits aren't you allergic to?"
Berries. Citrus. Bananas. Grapes.
But, as I was dramatically laying in my bed, praying not to hurl again, I pondered the blessing that was a fully loaded kitchen.
I could choose what to eat to calm my tummy, and settle my (seriously, for real) hypoglycemia. I need protein every 3-4 hours and that's that.
Then I thought of all those people on the run from life or death situations. Diabetics in a raft floating across the Mediterranean. Pregnant women in Mosul, praying for just one doctor or nurse.
Kids with conditions that require wheelchairs, trekking across the Sudanese desert to get to somewhere safe.
And of course, Navajo prisoners, 155 years ago, walking 450 miles into the unknown.
We forget that those who lived the history that we study were not privy to the outcome at the end of the chapter.
In all the reading that I've done on the Long Walk and the years at Bosque Redondo, other than the actual captivity itself, the predominant problem was food and water.
Thousands of people died of diseases that would have never taken hold, if the prisoners had enough food and water.
Try this experiment. Don't eat anything in your house for a week or two. Then wrap yourself in a blanket and take yourself and your kids somewhere strange, say another part of town-oh, and on foot- and sit down on the steps of a government building, and then wait for someone to bring you a bottle of water and a sandwich.
Perrier, and roast chicken on a croissant? That sounds lovely.
How about a hefty serving of derision with a side order of nothing?
No matter where or when we look at the suffering of others, the most very basic of criteria for help begins with water, and food. A lot of times, what the people are given has very little resemblance to what they would normally eat.
The Navajo were given green (unroasted) coffee beans, flour, lard, and rancid bacon.
Now, before you say anything about "that was long ago and the people were different", think about not just what they were given, but why they were given it.
The people in charge of feeding those thousands didn't have the miracle of the loaves and fishes going on in their heads. It was about procuring just enough to keep the prisoners alive.
The goal of that place was not to aid in the thriving of a culture, it was to bring it to its knees, and destroy it.
