smitten kitchen

A confession: In spite of my current, ongoing, seeming-like-it-will-never-ever-end condition, I don’t like traditional chicken soup. Obviously, boasting such sacrilege, I am undeserving of your sympathy. Obviously, this is why, four days in, I am still on the sofa on my second box of tissues, chugging down my 20th Brita pitcher of water, my nose as red as a rail-thin starlet at 4 a.m., the bitterness of having a SuperBowl party of one only slightly mitigated by the fact that the Giants triumph–I do not embrace everyones’ grandmother’s sworn-by home remedy.

Honestly, it’s not all chicken soup that I do not like; it’s just the stuff I can normally get. Those short noodles? I can never get them on my spoon! Those bits of chicken? Always overcooked. Those carrot specks? They’re just mush. I’ve tried X Deli’s and Y Market’s and Z Restaurant’s and they always disappoint, namely because these three ingredients were never meant to be cooked for the same amount of time, nor kept warm for hours on end, which is why I was given no choice this weekend but to take the matter into my own hand and make my favorite variety of chicken soup: matzo ball soup.

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All week, Alex has been sick with a cough, cold and scary-high fever, so it should be little surprise that I am now, too. What a sorry sight we are! Somewhere in the marriage contract should be a requirement that only one of us is sick at a time, or who will wait on us hand and foot? Anyone? Hello? [Radio silence.] Germophobes.

Nevertheless, this is a great time to catch up on some housekeeping, especially because I can do it from the sofa while Martha shows some beefy guys how to make brats-in-blankets–beefy guys, bratwurst… I’m starting to feel better already!

Death By Chocolate: Remember that Napa trip you sent us on last summer? Well, the good folks at Culinate are at it again and this time they want to send one food blogger and one reader on a trip for two to Napa Valley to attend the Copia Center’s annual Death by Chocolate Festival on Feburary 23, 2008 for a day of chocolate and wine tasting, demonstrations by pastry chefs and other sessions with chocolate junkies like yourself.

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