Chicken Soup 11_01_09

I roast a chicken for Friday dinner. I wrap it in tin foil. Like a present. Welcoming each new weekend.
It comforts me. This habit. The week-long jangling office sounds becalmed by the heat-ticking aromas of sweet pink chicken, cooking white.
Homely welcoming scent filling the house as I release the week, doing only as much housework as can be done in the time it takes to cook a chicken.
In an air of peaceful preparation, coming clean, calm deep-night silence of a cradled baby, or of midnight snow, I light a candle and eat in peace and quiet, counting my blessings. Grateful that I live where I live.
Wondering what Gazan children are eating this Friday night.

Saturday, I make stock from the chicken carcass.
Sunday, I strain the stock and make chicken soup.
Small and steady weekend rituals that heighten the knowledge that I have nothing imperative to do, and all weekend to potter. Sacred choral music on the radio. Winter sun enticing rainbows from the kitchen window crystals.
I am such a long way from Gaza.
But it is in my thoughts hourly.
Like a chiming clock.

To the stock, I add two sliced carrots, round discs like doubloons, and half of a finely chopped leek. Only the dark green half. This is a soup to herald Winter turning to Spring. White sky, orange sun, deep Winter green of the snowdrop shoots. Hope.
Not long now.
Not long.
I remember “still a chance of frost or snow“, as I add a flurry of rice, like my dad does when he makes chicken soup. He cuts the leak finely, his variation to his mother’s chunkier version. He remembers her, and I think of him, in our meditative chop and stir. I add black peppercorns and unpeeled garlic to my stock, my variation. I must teach someone this soon. To bring them comfort too.

Sometimes, if I’m feeling wistful or full of longing, I add a spoonful of Icelandic herbs. Grown in the short summer months on the volcanic ‘machair‘, picked and dried in the land of fire and ice, blessed by the ‘Huldufolk’ for Icelandic Kjötsúpa.
And occasionally, for my chicken soup. Sweet memories sprinkled, the ancient and the sacred, in the tiny green herbs and purple flowers.

Some years ago, a university in New York published their scientific study as to whether or not chicken soup could actually cure the common cold.
They began by asking 100 Jewish families for their recipes for chicken soup.
They got 100 different recipes.
Chicken was not the only common ingredient, for these recipes were full of love and the sacred symbolism only found in families raised in a slow food kitchen. They were moving to listen to in the way that only Spirit moves us.
Some soups were clear as consommé, others thick and filling as Scotch broth.
All had creation stories from their family members; honouring ancestors, handing love, tradition and nutrition to new generations.

The one I remember, was ‘Chicken soup with 13 vegetables’. In this particular Jewish home, each time a new baby was born into their family, a new vegetable was added to the family recipe. Welcoming this child.

It moved me that this nation who had suffered so much held life so precious. Such a celebration. Such welcoming souls. Such love.
Something sacred.
In a pot of soup.

52 times a year, each Friday evening, Jewish families gather together in their homes for Shabbat. At the start of their worship, after two candles are lit, blessings are said for the children.
Last week 13 members of the same Gazan family were killed in the home where they had gathered together.
It was them I thought of while eating my chicken soup tonight.

And Israel, I whisper in your sacred ear, and into the ears of the two angels who walk beside each one of you,
“Be a mensch.”