Since yesterday afternoon, I’ve been fighting an earache and have noticed I’m moving a little slow. I can tell I’m my mother’s daughter because the first thing I thought when I woke up in the middle of the night with my ear hurting was, “What do I need to hear that I’m not hearing?” Hah, yeah…

So far, it seems to be pretty minor, maybe just a sinus thing even, but I’ve been doing stuff today like applying warmth behind the ear and pulling out my usual immune-boosting tricks.

Turmeric tea…

…Green juice…

…Plenty of water…

…Probiotics (in the form of ginger kombucha)…

In a word: fluids. I have some cabbage soup on the stove for later. That’s another one of my go-tos. This batch is loosely inspired by this recipe but with cabbage instead of kale and liquid smoke in place of the pancetta. Oh yeah, and chickpeas instead of white beans. So it’s a completely different soup, but whatever.

I also made an egg in spicy tomato sauce (inspired by Living Orientals’ WIAW post) with eggplant for lunch, but that had everything to do with taste and basically nothing to do with my immune system, unless you count the copious amounts of red pepper flakes and garlic that went into this…

A lot of ear infections clear up on their own, but since I seem to be really prone to getting them, I always get a little anxious, anticipating how much past ones have hurt. At least if I decide I need a doctor, I know who to call, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that a little at-home TLC will do the trick.

What do you do when you feel you’re coming down with something?