It’s cold and I am sick, sick, sick. My throat hurts and my bones ache and I’m feeling like a great big baby, thinking that if I whine enough, someone will come and take care of poor old me. What I really need is sleep and maybe some drugs, but there’s work to be done, and somehow, in my illness-muddled-mind, chicken soup is the one thing that will make it all better.

I tend to forget that getting sick isn’t as fun as it was when I was a kid. In my mind, colds and flus still mean having free license to skip school, then sit around on a couch all day in pajamas and a fluffy robe, wrapped up in a quilt and watching trashy daytime TV while Mom brings me smushy, soothing simple foods in big, bottomless bowls. But the reality of my life these days is that there’s no school for me to skip, no comfy couch for me to recline upon (still at that futon stage of life, alas) and Mom is thousands of miles away on the other side of the country. And frankly, I’m a little scared to tell my boyfriend that I’m too sick to cook, since the last time I made that mistake, I ended up with a well-intentioned bowl of ramen noodles in "Oriental"-flavored, salty water.

Alone in the kitchen with just my hacking cough for company, I begin puttering around. I fill my hot water pot and set it to boil. I reach into the cupboard for a peppermint tea bag, drop it into my yellow mug, and wait for the water. And since no amount of willing it to be so has yet to cause a bowl of steaming hot chicken soup to materialize before my ache-y eyes, I peruse my fridge, and think about what to cook.