The Best Cold I Ever Caught

The price of 72 perfect hours.

When you spend 72 hours nonstop with a four-year-old, apparently a cold is included in the package.

But I’ll take it.

I’ll take waking up with his little body curled against mine, snuggling into bed together at night, swimming in the pool until our fingers turn to prunes, chocolate milk, belly laughs, and hearing “Mimi” approximately 4,782 times before lunch.

Now that he’s home, the house is quiet, my laptop is open, and I’m back to writing an exciting new 26-week series for Substack while something else is brewing on the stove beside me.

There’s no time for sickness around here anyway.

Besides, if this cold is the price of those 72 hours, I’d pay it every single time.

These are the days. ❤️

I stumbled into the kitchen around five this morning, got the percolator coffee going, and opened the refrigerator hoping to find enough ingredients to start a pot of chicken soup. I figured I’d eventually have to run out for carrots and a whole chicken, but then I found five or six onions, celery, four frozen chicken thighs, and my favorite Better Than Bouillon Chicken Base.

That was enough.

The grocery store could wait.

And somewhere, I think my grandmother would have approved.

Grandma was Slovak and extremely poor, feeding twelve children before all of us grandchildren started finding our way to her table. She grew vegetables in her garden and raised her own chickens, so there was no carefully curated ingredient list sitting on the counter. She cooked with what she had.

Nothing went to waste.

The celery leaves went into the pot. The skins stayed on the carrots. Onions, herbs, and whatever else the garden happened to give her became dinner. And those chickens she raised produced a broth I can still picture all these years later—deep, rich, golden-yellow, with little pools of chicken fat floating on the surface.

Grandma never called it Jewish penicillin, though.

That part of the recipe came much later, when I married Tom.

His parents were Jewish, and in their family, chicken soup was Jewish penicillin. His mother had her way of making it, my Slovak grandmother had hers, and somewhere along the way I began combining the two. A little from her kitchen, a little from Grandma’s, and eventually enough of my own tinkering that I stopped knowing exactly where one recipe ended and the other began.

Which is probably how the best family recipes are born.

So this morning I used what I had.

Five or six onions because apparently I was hoarding onions. No carrots because there wasn’t a single one in the refrigerator. Four chicken thighs instead of a whole chicken. Plenty of celery, including the leaves, because I can already hear the chefs who will argue with me about that—and Grandma would tell them throwing away a perfectly good part of a vegetable was ridiculous.

The pot went on around 5 a.m., and I let it brew throughout the day, filling the kitchen with that wonderful chicken-and-onion steam while I wrote, wandered back to stir it, poured another cup of coffee, and occasionally stuck my head directly over the pot and breathed it all in.

Apparently Jewish penicillin comes with a facial. 😂

And maybe that’s what I love most about making this soup. It has never really belonged to one recipe or even one family.

It began in the garden of a poor Slovak grandmother trying to stretch what she had far enough to feed twelve children. Decades later, it met the chicken soup Tom grew up knowing as Jewish penicillin. Now both versions live together in the pot on my stove, where I still cook the way Grandma taught us without ever actually saying it:

Use what you have. Waste nothing. Feed the people you love.

And when your gorgeous four-year-old grandson sends you home with a cold after 72 hours of swimming, snuggling, chocolate milk and hearing “Mimi” 4,782 times?

Put the coffee on.

Get the biggest pot you own.

And start brewing.

Because some things are absolutely worth catching. ❤️

THE JEWISH PENICILLIN RECIPE

🥣 Chicken: 1 whole 4–5 lb chicken is wonderful, but today I used 4 frozen chicken thighs. Use what you have.

🧅 Onions: 2 whole yellow onions—or 5 or 6, like I used today.

🥕 Carrots: 4–5 whole carrots, unpeeled. I didn’t have any today, so I simply left them out.

🌿 Celery: About 4 stalks, including the leaves. I know some chefs will argue with me about this, but my grandmother believed nothing edible should go to waste. We used the entire vegetable, including the skins on our carrots.

🥄 Better Than Bouillon Chicken Base: 2–3 tablespoons to start, then more to taste. For me, it has to be Better Than Bouillon.

💧 Water: Enough to generously cover everything.

🧂 Seasoning: Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste. Remember, the bouillon is already salty, so taste first.

🍅 Whole tomatoes: Optional. Add them if you like a richer tomato flavor in your chicken soup.

🌿 Fresh parsley: Chop it and add it at the very end, not while the soup is brewing.

🍜 Egg noodles, pastina, rice or matzo balls: All optional. I cook mine separately and add them to each bowl so they don’t soak up all that beautiful broth.

HOW I MAKE IT

Put the chicken, whole onions, whole unpeeled carrots, celery stalks and leaves into a large stockpot. Add tomatoes if you like them, cover everything generously with water and bring it to a boil. Lower the heat, skim away the foam, stir in the Better Than Bouillon and let it gently brew.

I let mine go for hours. Keep an eye on the liquid and add more water when necessary. When the broth is rich and the chicken is tender, remove the chicken and vegetables, pull the meat from the bones and return as much chicken as you like to the broth. Slice and return the carrots if you used them, then taste and adjust your bouillon, salt and pepper.

Fresh parsley goes in last.

For leftovers, I ladle the hot soup into clean Mason jars, seal them with metal Mason lids and wait to hear those satisfying little pops as they cool. Once cooled and sealed, the jars go into the refrigerator.

That’s really it. Use what you have, don’t waste the good parts, and taste as you go. My grandmother never needed a recipe to make chicken soup, and I suppose I don’t either.

But now all of you who asked finally have one. ❤️