What do you know: apparently it's fall. It took me by surprise. I knew it was coming, because my mailbox has been stuffed full of catalogs for a week or so and the freeqays are more crowded in the mornings, but today took me by surprise. The number on the thermometer at 7AM began with a 6, instead of a 7, 8, or even 9. I dropped Rudder off to catch a flight out and then went to work on my boat, since the lake is right near the airport. It was only then I realized that it would have been much smarter to pack my rowing gear (socks, seat pad, StrokeCoach) to take advantage of the weather, instead of touching up the paint and then going home to erg indoors. At 3:30 in the afternoon, the temperature was still in two digits, and is predicted to stay there for the next week. I've been wearing a T-shirt all day, instead of a little camisole top.
After my half-marathon on the erg, I had to go to food-shopping anyway, and while I was there impulsively decided to celebrate the change of weather by making a batch of chicken soup - the kind where you start with water and a chicken, instead of a can. Rudder's away, so this is just for me - I don't think chicken soup is the sort of comfort food for him that it is for me anyway. I experimented a little, adding some extras here and altering the timing a little there, but it was essentially the same soup as always. Jewish Penicillin, good for what ails you.
Maybe I needed the comfrt and continuity because so many appalling stories on the news that I almost wished I was Catholic, so I could invoked someone else to pray for our poor sorry species. Maybe it's because making staple you've eaten all your life and your great-grandparents before you, one for which you don't need to consult a recipe, is a practical way of bringing something good into the world. I associate soup with this time of year anyway because my family always began our holiday dinners with chicken soup: Rosh Hashanah, and then ten days later the dinner to break the Yom Kippur fast. This year the holidays are unusually late, not until October, but soup and turning seasons still go together for me.
I did it up right: matzo balls and mandlen, carrots and celery, onion, garlic, tiny noodles. I have no idea whether I'll be able to finish the whole pot of it, but I feel a little better about the world now. What else is comfort food for?
Posted by dichroic at September 10, 2005 08:24 PM