All That & A Bag Of Chips

I’ve been under the weather since the wee hours of Saturday morning. It was dismal, chaotic and overpowering until about 8:00 am Saturday. By Sunday morning, I was both relieved and convinced I had turned the corner and promptly went back to normal. Big mistake. Turns out, it was not a swift 24 hour bug. And one should not go from dry toast and watered down apple juice to normal food without a proper transition through the BRAT diet - my doctor’s nurse told me so belatedly today. But since I hate bananas, Chuck reminded me that I was on a RAT diet. (Thank you Sweetie. Cue gag reflex...) Of course, in the spirit of “the tooth stops aching when you arrive at the dentist”, by late this afternoon my fever had abated and my other grimmer symptoms had eased.

But prior to that turn of events Chuck had decided to make me chicken soup. Now, Chuck does know how to cook. He makes a mean pot of chili, a dazzling caviar pie and he taught me how to make hummus and baba ganoush. Unlike a brother-in-law who shall remain nameless, Chuck would not starve if left to his own devices without “The Missus”. But chicken soup has not been part of his repertoire - until today.

Back in 2008 I posted my recipe for chicken soup and my family’s recipe for chicken salad. I subsequently turned that into two digi-scrap layouts. I hesitantly inquired if Chuck would like to see my soup recipe. He readily agreed and headed off to the kitchen, scrapbook page in hand. Unlike my logical, scientific husband, the same man who reads instruction manuals, my recipes are simply lists of ingredients, coupled with guidelines. Despite the limitations of my “recipe” Chuck turned out one heck of a delicious chicken soup! Yes, he did ask me to tweak the final seasoning, but that was all I did. Well, besides slowly consuming a very small bowl of the reputed Jewish penicillin!

Oh! Chuck also multi-tasked and made a pot of Basmati rice for me while he was making the soup. My chicken soup is based on my mother-in-law’s, which was rice and noodle free. But tonight we each added a little of the R in my RAT diet to Chuck’s masterpiece and pronounced it delish.

Yes, I know exactly how fortunate I am!