The One Where I Make Soup

Poor Monique has been super duper sick these past couple days. I felt bad for her and I wanted to do something nice for her, so I debated my options (I decided hiring a male stripper dressed as a nurse was probably not going to be the most effective solution) and thought about what makes me feel better when I'm sick. This made me think about the time in summer 2008 when I got so sick I thought I may have been dying and all I wanted was for someone to inject tranqs into me and put me out of my misery until I felt better. 2008 was the summer before my senior year in college, so I was living back at my parents' house for the summer and working at a fine arts day camp (rough life, I know). 

Side note: working at that camp was actually really fun and I worked with 6 year olds, who are generally hysterical, and I met some pretty awesome people including a woman named Kiley, who makes absolutely the best YouTube videos you've ever watched. Kiley, sorry (?) I'm so obsessed with you as of late. I can't help it. You're really funny. Check out her vids here.

Anyway, back to the point of this story. Once that initial stage of PD (Potential Death) wore off, I still slogged around the house like a miserable creature for a few days and once I was well enough to sit upright, my dad made me from-scratch chicken soup and sat on the couch with me for an entire afternoon and watched a marathon of the MTV show Legally Blonde the Musical: The Search Elle Woods. What? You don't remember that show? You didn't know Legally Blonde was made into a musical? General WTF? Allow me to refresh your memory... 

Basically, the lord baby Jesus heard everyone's prayers for the iconic Legally Blonde movie (number 1... we don't speak of movie number 2, and we definitely do not speak about the book) to be turned into a musical experience. And we were delivered one of the best stage shows of all time. Then, the original woman who played Elle Woods in the Broadway musical (Laura Bell Bundy) decided it was time to move on, so they made an MTV reality show about picking the next Elle. You can learn more and WATCH FULL EPISODES here. Never in a million billion years did I think my dad would watch the show with me, which was full of your usual reality show forced-drama scenes, the inevitable cattiness that occurs when you have 15 young women in the same apartment together, and lots of pink and bend-and-snapping.

"Ohhhh nooooo will my dream of being Elle come true?" 

It was also really hard to keep track of everyone because they all looked the same, especially when they all had their hair dyed the exact same shade of blonde. 

Pre-blonde hair dying

But, watch it  we did, wishing Autumn would stop whining, Bailey would stop being so perfect, and feeling sorry for the dog who played Bruiser since he had to bark on command so many times during one episode. Anyway, this is one of my favorite memories of my dad not only because he endured LBTM: TSfEW but also because his soup really DID make me feel a zillion times better. 

So I decided to try my hand at making soup for Monique and see if that would help her at all. 

Step one (cut a hole in the box): Find crockpot chicken soup recipes. I still have a giant fear of cooking raw chicken in any way other than the crockpot. Recipe: obtained. See here.  (Note: I used brown rice instead of noodles. Just as tasty.) (Double note: the pictures below CLEARLY do not represent everything I did in this process, so don't follow my steps blindly. Be cool, don't be a fool, and follow the recipe.)

Step two: Chop yo' veggies.

Step three: Take a pic of your chicken broth by your crockpot because...?

Step four: Take a pic of the nasty raw chicken in the crockpot. Again, because...?

Step five: Add veggies and chicken broth (action shot!!!)

Step six: admire your raw creation.

Step seven: put a lot of salt and pepper in your soup and consume on your lunch break at work, blogging about making the soup. (So meta.) 

Overall, it's pretty tasty. We have yet to see its potential healing effects on the Roomster, but I hope she feels better soon. If not, we'll try reality TV next. And if that fails, I'm out of ideas. Well, no, that's not true. My final idea is head down to Mexico to buy cheap drugs from a farmacia and pray that no one ends up passed out in an alley (a la Marissa Cooper) because Ryan Atwood I am not and carrying people while wearing a wifebeater is not one of my many talents.

Any sickness remedies you like to use?