Ironic Trip to the ER and a Comfort Food Dinner Afterwards

I've kinda been wanting to mention this lately, but it never really came up as a natural part of our blogging conversation: My family has been pretty darn sick with a weird and yucky virus. For weeks.

The symptoms are as follows: high fever for a week (yes, one week) followed by a rash all over your body that comes and goes for days after the fever has ended, coupled with a significant amount of coughing.

For my two littles (3 and 6), the virus came and went without much hoopla. For my 11 year old, it's been a series of calamities. First came the highest fever (104) I have ever seen in a human. But in her case, it never went away after the seven days like we said it would. Next came the chest x-rays and a diagnosis of pneumonia (a secondary infection). And finally, yesterday, to top it all off, the headache from hell.

That set off a full day ride on the emotional roller coaster called Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital Emergency Room, which, by the way, is incomprehensibly amazing at making these precarious situations as good as they can be. West Nile Virus? Meningitis?

Just checking.

She's fine. I think.

By the time we got home, we all needed a little comfort food.

The Happy Herbivore's Chickpea Tacos.

Where's the beef? Who cares. These are so darned delicious I challenge any omnivore to miss the meat. 

Get the recipe here, but make sure to leave out most of the salt in the taco seasoning part of the recipe. Ms. Nixon failed to mention that and I have a feeling my rings aren't going to fit tomorrow, or maybe for the next week.
So what was so ironic about this whole virus episode? The fact that as this virus is wreaking havoc on my kids I am reading Dr. Fuhrman's Super Immunity, that's what.

Or maybe it's not ironic at all, and it's the universe taking care of us, sending me exactly the type of message that I need to hear: pay more attention to what your kids are eating because you don't want them to get sick like this again, do you?

Could all of this sickness mostly have been avoided had my kids been eating their raw veggies everyday (which they're not)? Dr. Fuhrman says so, and he's got the science to back it up. I guess it's time to start getting more creative about the veggies.

And pushy.

How do you get your kids/spouse/self to eat raw veggies if they are resistant?