Food Remedies – Homemade Chicken Soup & Vitamin C

What do you do when you get sick with a cold or flu?

Tips about Vitamin C, Zinc, and my Pseudo-Recipe for Homemade Chicken Soup.

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Yesterday I posted on how DS1 seemed like he might be coming down with something.  I am still holding on to a dash of hope that it’s simply his allergies, but that’s looking less and less likely as we woke up this morning with a very phlegm-y cough.  He still has a runny nose as well, so I’m hoping it’s just sinus drainage as the child (almost 5) doesn’t blow his nose.  He just wipes it across his face with his arm.  Ew.

The Food Remedy

Naturally, I got right on medicating and pumping the kid full of vitamins first thing this morning.  I made him a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast, hoping the heat would cut through the phlegm.  I served him up a full cup of orange juice and insisted he finish every last drop or he wouldn’t get his sucker.  Of course, he drank it, as I knew he would, which is a good thing because his sucker is how I pump him full of Vitamin C.

Vitamin C

Yes, I give my kids (myself and anyone else who may be sick under my roof) lots and lots of oranges and orange juice.  So while I gave DS1 both of these with his morning oatmeal, I also gave him a sucker made by Little Remedies.  It’s all natural (although the “sugar” and “corn syrup” both make me cringe a bit), with no artificial dyes, colors, or sweeteners.  They have zinc and the 50% recommended daily allowance of Vitamin C.  Plus, he thinks he’s getting a treat. Score!

Mommy’s Wingin’ It Homemade Chicken Soup

In addition to constantly topping off his orange juice and filtered water blend as I insisted he sit on the couch and watch movies (such torture for a little boy who just wants to run around), I decided that, for lunch, we would have chicken soup.

When I was a kid, chicken soup came in a can from the grocery store.  Someone else’s mom, Mrs. Campbell, I presume, made it at her house and put it in a can so that my mom could just plop it onto a pot and heat it up real quick.  Don’t get me wrong, now.  My mother took very good care of us when we were sick, and I owe her a lot for the knowledge I do have for treating sniffles and stomach bugs, but canned soup isn’t really high on my list of healthy food remedies.

When I recently had a visit from a friend, I managed to come down with a really nasty cold that had me feeling pretty miserable.  This was in early April, only a month ago, which is also when both of my boys were getting over their colds.  It’s insane that, only a month later, DS1 is getting sick….again.

While she was here, she made some pseudo-homemade chicken and tomato soup. Basically it was a dry tomato soup mix and she added a bunch of healthy stuff, including raw chicken that was boiled in.  It was delicious, and I could feel the broth working on my sinuses.  It was almost like divine intervention for congestion.

After she left, any time we start feeling sick or we’re getting over something, I’ve made some chicken soup from scratch.  There’s no real recipe for it, just a bunch of crap (healthy crap, that is) thrown in a pot of boiling water.  I don’t measure anything; I just make it up as I go, but it’s definitely satisfying and we can feel the spices and broth (and the all important healthy crap) working on the things that ail us.

My Pseudo-Recipe for Chicken Soup

Ingredients

Frozen chicken thighs – boneless and skinless
Fresh / Frozen Vegetables – change it up every-so-often
Noodles / Pasta – not necessary, but my kids like them. I use Quinoa Garden Pagodas because there is dehydrated veggies in it too
Water, and lots of it…preferably filtered
Onions – fresh, not frozen or dehydrated or whatever
Garlic – the real thing, please
Pepper – if you have freshly ground, that’s better
Garlic powder – strongest stuff I’ve got to keep it from getting bland
Sea salt, if you like, but don’t overdo it – let’s not trade the common cold for clogged arteries
Whatever other spices you’d like to throw in there

1. First, get some filtered water, or whatever water you have as boiling tends to kill everything (I’m more concerned with mercury and medications than the mere impurities in the water, which is why I filter) .  Stick it in a big ass pot and put your burner on high heat.  Make sure the kids aren’t around, or put it on the back burner so little hands don’t get burnt as kids have absolutely no sense of danger.
2. Pull out your bag of frozen chicken. You weren’t prepared for this. You didn’t know ahead of time someone was going to get sick, so naturally, the chicken isn’t nicely thawed in the fridge.  Grab a large mixing bowl, fill it with hot water from the tap and drop a few chunks of chicken in there.
3. Peal and cut a couple of onions. Make them big chunks, and dump them into the water.
   Why onions? Did you know that onions have something called Quercetin in them?  Quercetin is a natural anti-histamine.  So if you have allergies, you should eat these with every meal you possibly can and however you can get them.  More on this another time.
   
4. Take a couple of cloves of garlic and use a garlic press to squeeze the life out of them and into the pot.  If you don’t have a garlic press, well, you should really get one.  But for now, just chop ‘em up really well.  If you want to cheat, just get the pre-minced stuff in a jar, for now.  But really, get the fresh stuff and a good garlic press. I have a Cuisinart garlic press, and it works pretty well.
5. Grab a bunch of fresh veggies, or frozen even.  Just stay away from the canned stuff.  That shit’s not healthy.  Today, I used a combination of fresh and frozen broccoli in our chicken soup.  Why Broccoli?  I was going to use peas, but then I looked at the nutrition label and saw that while peas have a 10% daily value of Vitamin C, broccoli actually has 50%!  Score!  Now, it would be better to eat the broccoli raw, but we’re making soup, so whatever.  Chop it up and toss it in.
6. Maybe the water is boiling by now?  Maybe it isn’t. It doesn’t really matter.  Start throwing some seasonings in there. Freshly ground pepper is a good one, because it’s stronger than pre-ground pepper.  Pepper tends to clear out the sinuses, so the more the better, as long as it’s not so spicy you can’t stand to eat it.  In addition to the natural garlic and onions in the dish, go ahead and dump a bunch of garlic and onion powder in there to season it up really well. I’ve found that, unless you over-do the spices, homemade soup is actually quite bland.  Today, I also threw in some marjoram and rosemary, in addition to sea salt because, even after dumping half of my spice rack into the soup, it still just tasted like chicken water.
   You’ll notice I’m not giving you measurements. Why? I don’t use them. When I’m wingin’ it, which is generally how I roll in the kitchen, I just dump shit on the food and test it until it tastes good.

   Bonus Hint: Don’t pour or shake the seasonings directly over the pot. The hot steam tends to cake up the holes of the shakers, making it difficult to get the seasonings out of the bottle. Pour it into a separate container and then dump it into the pot.

7. If the water is boiling now, which it should be, go ahead and dump your pasta in there. By the way, I hope you’ve been stirring all this time.  It’s wise to stir occasionally.
8. Cut up your chicken. It should be thawed enough by now that you don’t get a hand cramp handling it and can cut it easily enough.  No tricks here. Just cut the thighs up and drop the chunks into the water.  There’s really no skill required here.
9. Keep boiling the shit out of it. You want to make sure the chicken is fully cooked.  The longer you boil it, though, the less it’s a soup and more of a stew. Today, it was more of a stew in our house.  Test the broth every once in awhile for taste.  Still bland? Throw in some salt and pepper, maybe some more garlic.  Whatever you think your taste-buds prefer.
   If you really like spicy, or come from a traditional Mexican household (was that racist?), try something extra spicy.  I don’t do spicy too well, but a little kick helps when you’re sick and the soup is boring.  I use this really cool stuff I found called “Red Monkey”. I know, I think I was drawn to it just because it’s called “Red Monkey”, but whatever.  It’s “ORGANIC grinders fresh seasoning Hot Pepper Blend”.  It’s a disposable spice grinder with all you need inside, which is really cool.  It has dehydrated red chili pepper flakes, mustard seed, black peppercorn, white peppercorn, dehydrated jalapeno flakes and dehydrated green bell pepper.  Now, if that doesn’t clear our your sinuses, I don’t know what will.
   
10. It’s hot as hell? Steaming, even?  Well, if it doesn’t taste like shit, you’re done. Serve it up, let it cool, and force feed it to the kids if you have to.  Threaten them, if need be. Tell them they will be sick forever if they don’t eat the soup, or bribe them with another Little Remedies sucker.  Whatever you have to do to make them eat the goddamn soup so they will get better already.

After they finish eating, dose them up with some cold medicine or benadryl (and fuck the non-drowsy formulas), and send them to bed for a nap.  Again, bribe them with a sucker.  You’ve given them two today. They don’t need another, but if they take a nap, they get a “treat”.

Go back to the kitchen, eat a bowl or two yourself, guzzle some orange juice and pop a Cold Ease, because you’re going to be sick in a few days yourself. Might as well get a jump start on it.

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