halloween cabin fever

Welcome to my own personal Halloween horror.
It’s being stuck at home alone for the week culminating in the ghoulish holiday.

I’ve been down with bronchitis. And though I am feeling better, my chest aches from hacking, (I can’t take cough meds.) leaving me too exhausted to do much of anything. And will all the flues and such, I’ve made it a point to keep my compromised immune system out of harm’s way.

I had planned on working today, as usual, in the kid’s department at BN. Even though the company had the official holiday celebration last Saturday, I was gonna dress up for story time. I was actually looking forward to it. However, it was not to be.

But this is not a day to be laying in front of the tellie. OK, so most holiday fare sucks, but for me—decidedly NOT a fan of horror flicks—it sucks dirty canal water. And switching to the shopping channels leads to a real life financial horror for this kid.

I could use some REAL chicken soup. I make a killer version. It’s a combo of my grams (Never use onions, it sours the soup.), an Italian neighbor from decades ago (Use chicken wings), and my fondness for dill. I won’t bore you with the whole recipe, suffice it to say the soup is rich, thick with slivers of meat and somewhat green.

Since I can’t be bothered to shop, let alone cook, I send out for chicken egg drop soup. It’s rich with eggy goodness. It will have to do. As I’m eating, something jiggles in the back of me brain—a memory—the recollection of making egg drop soup for my sick father as a kid. I used Lipton’s chicken soup as the base. I don’t even keep the stuff in my pantry these days. I consider myself lucky. Egg drop soup is one of the few Chinese dishes worth eating down here.

Oh for a good book.