Recipe a Week Challenge: Flu Fighter Chicken and Rice Stew

After successfully keeping the plague away from me for the majority of January, I finally got bit by some sort of bug.

You ever wake up in the morning and before you even speak, you know that you've developed some sort of illness overnight? That's exactly what happened to me last week.  I woke up coughing on Saturday morning and the worst part was I knew it was in my chest. Ugh. Not good when the whole reason you woke up early was to eat and prepare for a half marathon!

From the time you're a little baby runner, your coaches will tell you to do a "neck check" when you're sick.  That means if your symptoms are above your neck, you can run.  If they're below your neck, you should take the day off. Well as an adult, I think I know better than everyone and decided to run anyway.  Bad idea. By Sunday I'd lost my voice and spent the entire night hacking up my lung. I was like that till at least Wednesday.

In an attempt to feel better, I turned to a copy of Shalane Flanagan's cookbook Run Fast, East Slow that my marathon coach had given me.  I came across the NYC Marathon champion's "Flu Fighter Chicken and Rice Stew" recipe in that book. I didn't have any actual flu symptoms and wasn't diagnosed with influenza, but it sounded good enough to me!

I've had Shalane's cookbook for a few weeks, but I'll be honest...I waited to try a recipe from it because the recipes seem a little more advanced than my cooking abilities. This one looked like one of the easiest ones in the book and I'm glad I took a chance and made it! The recipe calls for immune-boosting and anti-inflammatory ingredients like garlic, ginger and parsley.  Those are all good things to help restore you when your body's been plagued with a cold or upset stomach (the ginger really helps with that one!) It really hit the spot and really soothed my throat after coughing as much as I was.

Because this recipe isn't readily available online, I won't be the first to type it out.  But if you're interested, someone else took the liberty of putting it on Pinterest. You can grab that pin and the recipe HERE. I added my rice later on in the game, so it was more a soup than stew consistency.