miso

Diluted homemade chicken broth, 50/50 broth/water, is heated in the smallest sauce pot. Approximately 1 tablespoon South River miso added to the broth/water after the liquid achieves boil, then the heat cut. 1/16 teaspoon hot chile flakes included for fun. 

Firm tofu is cubed, fresh vegetables are prepared in a serving bowl. 

I'm not feeling very well. At first I thought it was ordinary hay fever, then it seemed worse than that. A friend recommended Zicam a long time ago. This is the first time I ever tried it. The user breaks apart the little capsule to reveal a swab. Oddly, the box says homeopathic on the bottom right.  ¿  Apparently, the only active ingredient is zinc. I do believe this product lessened the severity because whatever is happening it's not following the usual course. I do not feel weak, but I do feel kind of shaky and a little headachy. A little bit lousy, but not miserable, and the whole sinus to throat to lungs back to throat to sinus thing is proceeding with a little overlap faster than usual and much less intense.  I'm also losing weight. The pounds are coming off me like a ... like a ... like something that really loses pounds fast. And after all that trouble packing on those pounds and reveling in my achievement.  This is not a good thing. 

I don't feel like cooking anything. About the only thing I can be arsed to do is boil water, thus the miso. 

This is the best miso available in the United States. FACT !

Watercress sold with the roots still on. 

Do you know what? This miso with fresh vegetables hits the spot. It staved starvation. 

When I was a little sprog and feeling all throw up-y and listless and unable to eat, Mum would go, "Okay, think about this, what in the whole world could you possibly eat?" 

Think, think, thinkey-think.

"Chicken pie!" 

Those little pies always cheered me right up. They're like magic, even if I couldn't eat the whole thing. I wanted it to have a crust on the top AND on the bottom, not just the top like those cheap-o rip-off kind of frozen pies. Imagine it: frozen --> oven --> my pie hole. Brilliant! Man, these humans thought of everything!

But then I discovered the joys of bouillon cubes. Doubly brilliant! Absolutely compactly triply brilliant. Whoever invented dry soup cubes was pure genius. 

Until eventually I bothered,

Ingredients:

Salt

Sugar

Partially hydrogenated palm oil

monosodium glutamate

cornstarch

-2%

onion powder

chicken fat and meat  ¿

garlic powder

turmeric (color, does it ever do anything else?)

disodium inosinate (used with MSG as flavor enhancer, mostly from pigs and fish) 

spices (I always wondered which ones) 

TBHQ (tert-butylhydroquinone, antioxidant, preservative, apparently harmless according to European and US food authorities, if they're to be believed. )

Does one want such things when one is sick, if ever? I conclude my own homemade chicken broth is much better if a little more trouble. Then again, one of those frozen chicken pies is sounding kind of good right now. Maybe I had just go get one.