I am currently pretty much back to normal strength, although I haven't fully transitioned back to my regular diet. I have actually stuck to the overly-healthy bland food diet by choice, and have not yet returned to the mountains of butter, meat, cheese and chocolate I normally consume.
I hesitate as last week was absolutely horrendous, a complete write off, both at work and at home, as literally I could do nothing but curl up into a ball in between my frequent visits to the porcelin throne. I went back to work after day 3, and lasted 2 hours. I ended up losing about 4kgs last week over the first four days, hardly eating anything, with even the BRAT food wanting to come back up. While the BRAT diet was gentle and helped me ween back onto solids, it still occasionally didn't sit right in my stomach.
After feeling worse than the bottom remnants in my toilet bowl, feeling dizzy, lifeless and with no energy, I decided I needed to get serious and eat my way back to strength and health. Struggling, I went on my quest to get back to the road to recovery.
Three hours later, I returned home with my treasures:
I planned on making a beef stock and a white chicken stock, purchasing beef bones from the butcher, chicken carcasses, and various stock vegetables and aromatics. I also bought some premium brown chicken stock to use to cook while my stocks were bubbling away - it was $13 a litre, but worth every cent, as it became a magical wonder-elixir that helped me gain my strength back. Other items included, Mizone, miso powder, organic chicken, and pasta.Things that I felt worked really well:
- The incredible Essential Cuisine chicken stock. I used it as a base to cook rice and I found it made bland rice taste relatively nice, and at one stage it actually tasted quite creamy as though I mixed in an egg yolk. It contained no added salt, sugar, msg, preservatives, artifical flavouring or colouring, which was important to a poisoned individual such as myself, and was made using a "traditional chef's recipe". The ingredients are listed as "Chicken stock derived from roasted chicken and chicken bones 50%, water". Essential Cuisine chicken stock has become a good friend, although potentially it was the warm bland food byproduct that made me feel better.
- my homemade stocks turned out great - and I also used it as a food base once I finished the Essential Cuisine chicken stock. I gradually infused half with a bulb of garlic and used it to make rice with chicken and peas.
- Mizone and ginger tea always made me feel good - better than powerade in my books.
- Toast with plain Vegemite
- Miso soup - went to the most authentic Japanese shop I could find and tried to find the best miso on offer ($9 for a pack of 6). The owner was Japanese without fantastic English, and the miso I got didn't even have English instructions (can someone please help translate - see below). I just added hot water, and it made me feel better, even if I wasn't sure I was drinking it right
Things that I felt didn't work particular well:
- 7up/sprite didn't sit that great
- Salt and vinegar potato chips. Started off well, but was a bad idea. I think it was a bit too oily and upset my stomach. Resist the temptation
- Starchy bananas - let them ripen
The week that was:
Monday - clear fluids
Tuesday - clear fluids, potato chips
Wednesday - clear fluids, BRAT diet
Thursday - Plain toast, chicken stock and rice. Added small slices of chicken and peas to it for dinner
Friday - Baked beans and toast. Chicken and pea rice. Ate out at a Korean restaurant - their beef casserole was amazingly tasty and made me feel fantastic
Saturday - Baked beans and toast. Terikayi chicken udon. Ate out for dinner at reknowned Auckland seafood restaurant Hammerheads. Once in the restaurant, I felt magically transformed back into my food-loving self, so I went all out and decided to test the stomach. At the same time, I was being conservative after having flashbacks of the food poisoning effects.
My selections:
- Seared scallops, crab and snowpea salad, pea puree, fried shallots - $23.00
- Seared game fish, tempura prawn cutlets, orange slices, julienne cucumber, mint, sprouts, shoots, and a honey mustard dressing - $36.00 (tuna)Side note: Hammerheads is fantastic for seafood, just as everyone says! The tuna looked undercooked but was in fact cooked skilfully as the fish tore tenderly and beautifully. I also thought my mate's Kingfish looked underdone, and as a result expected a chewy texture, but again, it was indeed skilfully cooked, and tasted as a game fish should - delicious and meaty.
Sunday - The stomach was not very happy on Sunday morning, and grumbled in revenge. I proceeded to have a very light breakfast of Vegemite toast. For lunch I had a beautifully fresh vegetarian muffin, which has since then inspired me to recreate it. For afternoon tea, I stopped over for a pie at Angelo's (of the on-sold "The Fridge" and "The Chiller" fame) latest venture, The Food Room in Ponsonby. In my opinion, Angelo maintains his crown of arguably some of Auckland's best pies, and has even started the trend of reversing rising coffee prices, by dropping all of his coffee (which in my humble Melbourne-coffee-snob opinion is fantastic) to $3. Dinner was a variation to Top Chef's Broccoli Coucous, using chicken instead of duck.
I have since eaten chicken and vegetable pasta, vegetarian couscous, along with the standard baked beans/vegemite toast combination. Today marked a milestone with my first coffee since the incident, and after feeling confident of no consequences, I had a full milk protein shake after hitting the gym for the first time in two weeks.
I'm back baby! Happy eating.
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