#18: chicken soup with rice

More accurately, it was chicken noodle soup. A bout of the sniffles has descended upon our household, so we're combatting them as best we know how. I wanted to make a batch of homemade chicken noodle soup--after all, I went to all that trouble to mail myself the requisite Rede-Made Noodles ("Just like Grandma's old-fashioned egg noodles") at Christmastime--but I have yet to call Mom for her list of seasonings. So I had to make do with his & hers: Campbell and Lipton. (The texture of chicken meat in soup has never appealed to me, and I'm leaning more toward a meatless diet these days, anyway.)

Thanks to Maurice Sendak's long-standing children's book, it's rare for me to hear "chicken soup" and not mentally tack on "with rice." Its full title is Chicken Soup with Rice: A Book of Months (Harper & Row, 1962). It must have been republished, because certain sites I stumbled upon gave the date as 1987 and 1991. Thanks, UM Libraries' Bison catalogue, for identifying the earlier publication date, because I was quite certain I'd first heard it read aloud in grade one or on Friendly Giant. Its rhythm and rhymes made a lasting impression. I searched around a bit and found the following animation, directed by Sendak with music composed by Carole King. Cool! That oughta' get me through the next couple of days--that and the following stockpile. We defy you, germs!



Oh, yes, and today marked leap year. I had the good fortune to make a purchase at the UO Bookstore (definitely not on par with UM Bookstore) and find that everything was 25% off.