Chicken Soup for the Soul

The lovely Naoko-sensei wasn’t the only one taking care of me when I came down with my cold in December. Keizo came over twice to fill my larder and provide some distraction from my symptoms. The first night I could feel the cold coming on, he brought over some hot udon for dinner, some OTC cold medicine and a package of masks, which he thought we both should wear. While eating the udon, I commented that in the U.S., chicken soup is popular fodder for sick people. He left and I went to bed early.

The next day was the day I went to the doctor. The day after that is when I wrote the last post. I failed to mention Keizo’s second care visit because I didn’t think too much of it until I got better and started putting the pieces together.

He let me know he was coming over in the afternoon with some food for me to eat. When he arrived I was napping on my porch, so he let himself in and told me to take it easy. I stayed on the sunny porch for about 10 minutes when I realized there were no sounds coming from the inside of my apartment. I went inside to investigate and found Keizo sitting on the couch starring at the wall. He showed me the bag of stuff he brought, which was a lot of raw produce, and I asked him if he had picked up any apple juice, which was my one request. He had missed the message, so he went back out again and I ate some soup that Vanessa brought me the night before.

When I was feeling better, I went through the bag of groceries Keizo bought. Inside there were carrots, broccoli, onions, chicken and even some hard to find cilantro. There was also a box of chicken boullion cubes and a box of instant chicken consome. As I was putting them away, I noticed there was a picture on the back of the instant consome---carrots, broccoli, onions, a chicken leg and a green herb-y thing. The picture and the contents of the shopping bag matched exactly! My quiet knight in shinning armor had done his best to get me some chicken soup, but once all of the ingredients were in front of him, he had no idea what to do with them. Hehe. Maybe it didn’t have quite the healing effect he anticipated, but they do say that laughter is the best medicine.

Before I left for my winter vacation, I used up the ingredients in the bag and made my first ever chicken soup from scratch courtesy of a recipe from the internet. It came out pretty well, if I may say so myself.