My weekend was a miserably cold one spent working as a visiting nurse. I love my job, but I had a nasty head cold all weekend, which was made all the more unpleasant by going in and out of the cold from one patient’s house to the next. By the time I was done seeing patients I just wanted to relax, be warmed, and be nourished. My Crock Pot Cold-Buster Soup with a Kick is made from frozen vegetables, pasta, and a little spicy seasoning thrown into a crock pot for 4 hours. It features a variety of vegetables with a wide spectrum of colors and nutrients. It also has a spicy kick to clear stuffy noses!Crock Pot Cold-Buster Soup with a Kick
Prep: 5 minutes Cook: 4 hours
Serves: 6
Ingredients
- 2 32 oz. cartons of organic chicken broth or 8 C of bone broth
- 1/2 bag Hodgson Mill Veggie Rotini (8 oz)
- 1 Tbsp olive oil
- 1 16 oz bag frozen mixed peppers and onions
- 1 C frozen kale
- 1 C frozen butternut squash
- 3 cloves garlic, minced ( or 1.5 tsp dry garlic)
- 1 Tbsp hot Mexican chili powder ( 2 tsp for a milder soup)
- 1 tsp paprika
- 1 tsp sea salt
- 1 Tbsp fresh or frozen cilantro
- 1 Tbsp agave nectar
Directions
1. Place all of the ingredients, except for the cilantro and the agave nectar in the crock pot.
2. Place the crock pot on low heat and cook for 4 hours.
3. Before serving, mix in the cilantro and agave nectar and enjoy!
As a gluten free option use a gluten free pasta such as rice pasta or quinoa pasta.
As a “visiting” nurse you should have known better than to spread your head cold by “visiting” patients who were probably already immunocompromised by being housebound in the first place. I’m stunned that you didn’t try harder to avoid exposing your patients to your own illness by just staying at home yourself. If you were “visiting” my family, I would have refused to let you inside and would have insisted that you come back another time when you were not ill.
Hi Linda. I hear where you’re coming from! Unfortunately the decision to go in to work with a cold is always a complex one because of the ever present nurse staffing shortages in the winter. Sometimes it’s more helpful to patients for a nurse to work with the sniffles than for their wound care not to be done, their IV antibiotics not be administered, or for a blocked urinary catheter to not be replaced. Certainly if I had a fever I would have stayed home, but I’ve never been turned away by a patient because I had the sniffles!
Well, how about all the patients that are sick with a “cold” and come into their doctor’s office coughing and sneezing all over the office. Should’nt they stay home?
Haha! That is a good point! Seriously though… throughout the cold in flu season nurses are sick ALL the time. It comes with the job I guess. If everyone called out for a cold there would be some serious staffing problems! Of course I’d call out if I had a major illness, but not the common cold. 😉