Chicken Soup

It's been a while since I wrote about food.
Adi has a cold. He's being incredibly brave but I am having a hard time with it. This morning I got all mushy hormonal, crying because I couldn't fix him. He was very reassuring, saying that the tea I made him and vitamins I fed him were helping. Whatever.
I dedcided to do something drastic and make chicken soup today. Drastic because a) It required a trip to the supermarket to procure the chicken and b) It required handling the flesh of a dead animal.
a) Was easier to overcome than I feared when I remembered the small market a 5-min. drive away with easy parking. Normally, I do all my grocery shopping online. The deliver (Lord bless them) and though it *may* cost more (who knows?) it is worth every shekel. Actually I think I spend less when I shop online because it is so much eaiser to compare prices and remove items when the total starts looking high. It is also rather hard to make impulse purchaces online.
When you go to the actual supermarket as rarely as I do, it's actually sort of fun. Especailly when the store is clean, well-stocked yet small enough not to cause nervous break down.
Anyway, I bought the chicken.
"What do people usually get for soup?" I asked the uniformed young Russian behind the meat counter.
"Legs. Or wings."
"Or both?"
"No. One or the other."
I couldn't decide, and the whole chickens looked cuter somehow.
"I'll take a whole one. That small one. Can you cut it up please?"
That was it. Pretty easy. I bought some celery, an enormous thing with a forest of dark green leaves attached.

b)I ate a fistfull of candy corn (DELICIOUS) to brace myself, then rinsed the poulet parts and put them in the bottom of huge meat pot. I added most of the celery (gave up on trying to add all those greens though I'm sure they're very good for you there were just too many!), an onion, a hunk of garlic, several carrots (I resisted peeling though I prefer them peeled). Oh yes and a hunk of ginger. That's my mother's trick. It gives you the best of Jewish and Chinese healing soup powers!
I covered the whole lot of it with water and turned on the flame.

As of this posting it is still simmering and the house is indeed smelling like chicken soup.

Faye Levy includes dill. I don't like dill so I didn't. Planned to include some parseley but I found it had been trapped in a bag with a cuccumber which had rotted, so I tossed it. Ordinarily, I'd probably separate and rinse carefully but being pregnant I'm unwilling to take such risks with food.

I sent urgent mail to my mother and Charles for further instructions and they responded promptly.