Miso Soup for the Soul

I've been sick for the past week, which has manifested in strange ways: my bad back, a splitting headache that lasted for days, runny nose (and other gross expulsions), light-headedness. You know, cold stuff. I've been spending a lot of time at home in bed, actively fighting my innate urge to push through my illness. Every winter, especially since moving to Pittsburgh, I've gotten sick. Each year, I push through my illness and ride my bike in the cold rain or snow, run the Schenley trails, and try to convince my body to stop being so wimpy. Now that I'm self-employed, I have the luxury of creating my own schedule (except for my multiple looming deadlines). I'm trying to use that to my advantage to give my body the time and space needed to relax. It's hard, but luckily since I work from home I can multitask and rest in bed with Cupcake Wars while still doing some light editing.

But, a girl's still gotta eat. I was thinking a lot today about bone broth, because I'm considering having guest bloggers contribute a post once a week, at least for a month, to offer a different perspective or set of knowledge than what's usually presented here. Paleo diets are fairly meat-centric, even though our human predecessors ate much less meat, and I was considering what sort of content I would want a potential paleo contributor to offer. That's yet to be disclosed, kind readers, but in the meantime it also got me thinking about chicken soup, since I'm sick, which was tied in with the bone broth for obvious reasons. But I don't eat chicken! What's a gal to do?

Luckily, I happen to be married to an industrial individual who does not have a head cold. In a matter of minutes, we had miso soup with dried seaweed, spiraled carrots, and sweet potato starch noodles, topped with Sriracha — aka rooster sauce, or "cock sauce" if you are 20 years old — to bring the heat that will hopefully help sweat out this evil being living in my sinuses. Here's some proof:

This soup hit the spot for a cool Pittsburgh evening when I needed something nourishing and satisfying. In case you are wondering about bone broth, however, I did find this nice recipe, which uses burdock root (the bone of vegetables) instead of animal bones. So if a paleo blogger does grace us with some insight and posts a bone broth meal plan or consideration, here's a helpful alternative.