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When I’m sick, I like to curl up in bed in my PJ’s and be served comfort food made by OTHER people. One of those foods was chicken soup, particularly my Mom’s - a nurturing food of fragrant comfort and homey warmth. Now, I don’t know much about the actual physical benefits and/or curative myths of chicken soup, but I do know that I always feel the love of the person who took the time to make food for me. Love heals me.

I cannot remember a time when I was sick and wasn’t served chicken soup… until now. Since my diet turned less meat-centric around approx. this past May, I’ve abstained from eating slabs of beef, pork or chicken. It has been a struggle, but I’ve been very diligent in maintaining a healthier lifestyle, except for that one time this past summer when I sampled some BBQ pork ribs. Hey, it’s just really difficult to suppress years of being a carnivore. Most of my childhood memories of “good times” in the summer seem to include the park and barbeques.

OK, truthfully, I did not stray from the path while I was sick. The Vegetarian Jedi spirit was strong even though the body was weak. I asked for veggie or seafood based foods… and man, I’m telling ya, it just wasn’t the same feeling. These lovely soups were fragrant, full-bodied, tasty soups but… not chicken soup penicillin.

The following poem that I found in an old cookbook, “The Whole World Loves Chicken Soup” (by Mimi Sheraton) says it better than I ever could:

Chicken Soup
Mama had the secret recipe
For medicine to comfort me.
Not antibiotic by description,
Chicken soup was her prescription.
Feeling depressed and oh, so blue,
Chicken soup was right for you.
And for a newly broken heart,
Chicken soup could do its part.
If in bed with sniffles,
Fever, aches, or loud wheezes,
For nourishment at noon or night,
Chicken soup was always right.
But, for chicken soup to be expedient,
Love must be its main ingredient.
- Douglas Torre

During the Toronto International Film Festival, even though I ate a lot “on the go”, I still tried to eat decent, healthy and cheap fast food. I was, however, tempted by this order of Popeyes Chicken (click on the image to the left), but the Vegetarian Jedi prevailed! The funny thing I noticed about Popeyes was the writing on the paper napkins - something about the quality assurance of ingredients and frying up birds. Chicken QA!

Seriously, to all those people I saw in the movie theatres eating movie theatre food - popcorn, hotdogs, nachos and cheese, chocolate brownies, pizza, pretzels, soda pop… at 9:00 AM (freakin’ morning!), lunch, dinner… in between movies… wow, that’s just SO bad. Yes, I’ve been guilty of eating stuff like that, but nowhere near as bad as the stuff I saw people eating in the theatres SO early in the morning.

What else? Oh yeah, thanks to you-know-who-you-all-are for the get well wishes during my Ebola days. Pictured on the left are some of the meds I received… Yeah, ok, the restorative powers of a stack of Lay’s Potato Chips? I didn’t understand that either, but I ate them anyway.

And lastly, a friend recently sent me this movie teaser trailer that she found on YouTube for a “B” movie coming out in a few months called Poultrygeist. She jokingly said that after watching it, I would perhaps lose my taste for chicken forever. I’m not sure it totally put me off, but it is kinda gross… and it might have cured me of my abnormal fondness for cheesy “B” flicks. A zombie chicken horror flick? I’ll probably regret putting up the video, but here it is in all its tasteless glory:

So, to wrap up this overly long chicken ramble… Anyone care to share good recipes (use Contact form if it’s long) or memories of tasty, healthy comfort food? Who takes care of you when you’re sick? Talk to me, crazy fruity is listening (which isn’t often so enjoy it). Help me to build new memories… and also, quit waving your crispy, spicy fried chicken in front of me! (Dear friend, FYI, although I’ve abstained from gobbling up chicken for several months now, I actually haven’t eaten FRIED CHICKEN in over a year.)

Adieu,

feeling fruitylicious

P.S. Synopsis of Poultrygeist movie per website:

“When the American Chicken Bunker, a military-themed fried-chicken chain, builds a restaurant on the site of an ancient Indian burial ground, local protestors aren’t the only ones crying fowl! The previous tenants, fueled by a supernatural force, take “possession” of the food and those who eat it, and the survivors discover that they must band together before they themselves become the other white meat!”

… ummm, yeah, OK uh-huh, that’s my reply…