her able hands

Somebody left me comments on a couple of posts at the old Baggage Carousel last night, and after the sucktastic week I’ve had, the high five in the endzone just made my day. I know, I know, I’m supposed to shut that site down already, but you know what I’ve discovered about myself, again? I’m not so good with that letting go of the past thing. Plenty of good talk, not so much with the action.

Last night I tried to take the suckage down a notch by whipping up a big pot of the most delicious and comforting Egg Drop soup I’ve ever had.

I warmed the gallon of rich chicken stock I made last weekend with the carcass from our roast chicken dinner, and added about a cup of medium grain white rice and frozen chopped spinach because I haven’t planted my spinach yet. Ahem.

Once the pot came to a simmer, I covered it and turned the heat to the lowest setting and left it for a half hour until the rice was fluffy and calling out for the egg. But first I mixed some chicken bullion and cracked white peppercorn into the broth. Using a fork, and trying not to make too many foamy bubbles, I lightly mixed three eggs in a measuring cup with a pour spout. Then I used the tines of the fork to cover the spout, held it a few inches above the soup at the inner edge of the pot to drizzle the egg through the tines very slowly with my left hand while I stirred the soup gently in one direction (clockwise, but I don’t think it matters) letting the egg form thin strings as it caught the current in the swirling river of broth. Oh, and the heat is off at this stage.

That’s it. Now eat. Seriously the easiest soup, and so nutritious. Would probably work just as well with a vegetable stock.

I needed something simple that packs a punch so Lila could get something of value into her wracked body. She’s had an unidentified stomach thing all week, and her appetite is so light that she’ll only eat about two bites of anything maybe twice a day. Of course I’m worried that I didn’t wash her hands well enough and she got Salmonella from the chickens. Then yesterday morning her neck seized up and she wouldn’t let me touch her without screaming as if her hair was on fire. So we spent most of the day in the ER and I’m glad we did because now we know that she doesn’t have meningitis, and just as impressively that she’s developing into quite a dramatist and has figured out that if she whines, my tummy aches, my neck hurts whenever our attention is on something besides her for even a minute, that we drop whatever we’re doing and attend to her immediately.

So yeah, deep suckage. But the soup and the nice comments? Making my day.

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