Food. Also: More Food.

My doorbell just rang at 12:30 in the morning. This makes me kind of nervous. I didn’t answer it. Is it weird that that made me nervous? It was probably just a drunk friend who happened to be walking down my street, but it could also have been some evil guy who rings random doorbells until a girl answers so that he can cut off her fingers and toes. And then eat them. Am I too paranoid? I think I’m too paranoid.Last night, I realized that I had no food in the house. This happens to me every couple of weeks, mostly because I always put off grocery shopping, which I despise doing because I don’t know how to cook for myself and therefore never know what food to buy. I’ll do a big shop once a month or so, and I’ll eat well for the first week (“Fresh veggies! Stir fried! Over couscous! With a salad!”,) improvise for the next two weeks (“Hmm, I have pasta, and also milk and parmesan cheese, so I can probably make some sort of creamy sauce…I think”,) and ration what’s left for the last week (“Cranberry sauce is nutritious enough for dinner. Right?”)

I’ve been in that last phase for the past couple of days — dinner last night was baby carrots and a popsicle — so I knew that I needed to go shopping tonight. Of course, just my luck, it was pouring all day. I knew that I wanted to buy eggs, milk and diet coke (among other things,) so rather than risk slipping in a puddle with heavy and/or fragile packages while walking home, I dug out my big-ass granny cart.

The granny cart lives in the closet. It’s used mostly for trips to the laundromat, so I use it, logically enough, as a laundry basket. Which means that when I use it for other purposes, I have to take my dirty clothes out and leave them in a pile on the floor until I’m done. Which tonight, led to an interesting situation.

I really didn’t think anything of it when three guys made “woohoo” sounds at me as I walked to the store — I’m used to that side-effect of my extreme hottness by now. I also didn’t really think that anything was unusual when a woman smiled broadly and winked at me as I passed, because, well, that’s the kind of neighborhood I live in. But when I was walking down the aisle at the grocery store past a clerk who couldn’t stop giggling, I started to feel a little self-conscious. Was my mascara running? Was my shirt on backwards? No, no, nothing like that. Twenty minutes later, when a box of pasta fell out of my cart and I bent down to pick it up, I finally realized what the fuss was all about.

Yeah, apparently I’d been dragging around a certain article of clothing that had attached itself to the back wheel of my cart. Not a shirt, or a sock, no, that would have been too easy. Instead, because this is my life and my life is a movie, I was showing the entire world my lacy, lavender bra.

Oh, the humanity.

So, I noticed that my grocery store actually had kosher chicken in stock, and decided to buy some even though I have serious, serious issues with touching raw meat. I’ve been craving chicken soup as of late, and not the kind you can buy in a can. I’m talking the real kind, the homemade kind, the Jewish Penicillin kind. It’s one of the few things I can make really well, so I bought the rest of the ingredients I needed, came home and made me some soup, and damn, it hit the spot.

And now, beloved readers, I’m going to share with you the recipe for The Best Damned Chicken Soup Ever.

You will need:

Chicken pieces — I used a package of legs, but you can use whatever you have handy. Just make sure that it still has the skin.

Soup greens — If you can’t find them pre-packaged, get two large carrots, two large pieces of celery, a turnip, a parsnip, an onion, and a handful of dill.

Garlic — My grandma doesn’t use garlic in her recipe, but I like it. Three or four cloves, left whole, should do the trick.

Packaged chicken soup mix — This is the secret ingredient! It’s shit if you’re just using it the way the directions on the box say, but mixed with all the other stuff, it’s beautiful. I’m partial to Manischewitz, but I suppose you can use any brand.

Okay, so first, you clean the chicken. Leave the skin on, but clean it off. Don’t worry about removing all the grisly bits like you would if you were serving the chicken to guests, because it’s really just too much trouble for the soup. Throw the chicken in a big-ass pot. If you don’t wash your hands real well here, my mother will appear out of nowhere and scream at you, so, you know, wash your hands real well here. (She also advises placing a paper towel around the bottle of soap before you ever touch the raw chicken, so you don’t end up contaminating that, too. My mom’s the smartest lady in the whole wide world.)

Now, wash and peel your vegetables, and leave them whole when you throw them into the big-ass pot. If you don’t like bits of dill floating around in your finished product, you can wrap it in cheesecloth, but I rather like the bits so I leave it loose. Throw the garlic in there too, while you’re at it.

Next, lug that heavy pot over to the sink and fill it with cold — COLD — water, just high enough to cover the chicken and veggies. Stir in the packet of soup mix until most of the clumps break up. Oh, and in case you didn’t figure this out on your own, move the pot back to the stove. You were smart enough to figure that out. Right?

Turn the burner on high — no, not that burner, the one under the pot. Yes, that’s right. Aww, you’re so good at this! When the soup comes to a boil, let it go for a minute or two. That will break up any of the remaining soup-mix clumps. Once that’s done, turn the heat down, give your soon-to-be-soup a good stir, make sure all the veggies and stuff are submerged in the water, and cover the whole shebang with a tight-fitting lid. Let the soup simmer for at least an hour, stirring it every fifteen minutes or so. When the chicken is cooked all the way through and the carrots are soft, but not mushy, the soup’s done. If everything’s going well, the soup will be pale yellow with beautiful, tiny globules of fat floating on top. (That’s because you left the skin on the chicken! And, calm down people, it’s really not that much fat. Certainly less than you’d get from something packaged. This is healthy food here!) If your soup is magenta or plaid, then either something’s gone terribly wrong or you’re on an acid trip. Try to figure out which, before you pour your hard work down the drain.

Take out all the veggies, and set the carrots aside. Throw the rest of them away, and slice the carrots into half-inch thick slices. My grandma saves the chicken for chicken salad, but I like to shred up the meat and throw it back in the pot with the soup. Oh, throw the carrot slices back in there, too. If you want, you can boil some noodles or make matzo balls too, but I didn’t feel like doing that tonight. Serve yourself a bowl immediately, but wait until it’s cooled down a bit before taking a sip — I wouldn’t want you to burn your itty-bitty tongue on the hot ho

t soup, so don’t even think about suing me if you do. You can store the rest in the fridge for a couple of days, or freeze it in individual portions, but if you freeze it, throw out the carrots before you do so, because those get nasty when they’re defrosted. Next, send me gifts and money, because this is seriously going to be the best damned soup you’ve ever tasted.

Now, I don’t have to walk you through the cleanup too, do I? Okay, good, because I suck at that part too.