Gee whiz!

I'm sick!

This is a weird one - my throat's a little scratchy but mostly it's one of those muscle illnesses: My legs hurt, my low back hurts, and my head hurts. Even four Ibuprofen didn't banish all of the pain.

I was just sick over Christmas, so I don't understand why I'm sick now. I must have been exposed somewhere, but I can't think where... I must have had an open door making me vulnerable to illness; probably stress and depression, because I've been sleeping and I've been wearing hats. Well, actually, now that I think about it, I haven't really been sleeping. I've been sleeping through the night, but not very many hours.

I made some chicken soup out of almost nothing - some egg noodles, "Better Than Boullion," water, peas, corn, and some lemon juice. That felt very adventurous, the lemon juice. I think hanging around foodies is rubbing off on me.

Making the soup reminded me of the first time I saw a boy (other than my brother) cook: I had a crush on this guy in my class, and one day after school I went to his house, and he made some soup for us out of ramen. Though we didn't eat it at home, I was familiar with ramen by then and knew the typical (and only, to my knowledge) preparation of boil water, add noodles, add MSG-laden spice packet. Well, this boy left out the spice packet, put in soy sauce and probably some other things, and added chopped carrots and peas.

I don't remember eating the soup or what we did that afternoon - probably read comic books. I had the crush, not him. Since then I have known several excellent male cooks, but that afternoon I understood that you could actually cook an after-school snack, and you could do it even if you were a boy.