new year, reflections & healing.
home made soup, more quiet time, taking care of self and so on.
I am writing to you as a very unwell person. This is especially ironic since my ‘Word of the Year’ for 2024 is (well at least it was) Health.
I basically couldn’t even get through a sentence today without coughing. Who knows where I got it, but I’ve been pretty much in bed since Sunday. But don’t worry - I'm all set with soups and teas and vitamins and pain killers etc.
So having said that, I thought I would share with you “my” chicken soup recipe, and new obsession with ‘cappelletti in brodo’ and other health/healing things. (As I suspect I am not alone in having a rather subdued start to the year.)
I LOVE new year. Not necessarily the night (although Scotland’s Hogmanay really is something), but more the concept around it. The reflection, the hope of something new, resolutions.
New journals, thinking about goals, past times, thinking about who you really want to be.
Here is a selection of some of mine:
write recipes down in a recipe book (also more healthy recipes!), cook more
start a scrapbook / sketchbook
more quality family time, quiet time, peaceful reading time
work on confidence, people pleasing, over apologising
Duolingo Scottish Gaelic and Irish
get health appointments that I’ve been avoiding
‘walk the walk’ more in terms of social justice things
creative pursuits
Photo by Cristina Gottardi on Unsplash
I was lucky enough to spend time with my family in Scotland, see the new year in Venice (fireworks over the lagoon) where I still have my apartment, and spend some time in the snowy mountains in the north of Italy (Monte Civetta, Alleghe).
Things have been quite busy though, both before, during and after the holidays, so it is probably mostly my fault that I became unwell.
Far too many things going on: another exam this weekend, a report, a presentation both due within days of each other and then going on a field trip to Kosovo (which I know will be really interesting, but still quite tiring). Then moving out from Venice, 2 weeks at home (Rome/Scotland), before starting the next semester in Slovenia. It’s hard to do my new years resolution of taking things more slowly, focusing on health and quiet time, when everything is all go go go. I’m going to try where I can, and I am hoping to be able to enact this in small ways from February.
I truly feel I have been more unwell this time than I have been in a very long time, and I have been pretty much out of action for almost a week now. I’m so sad that I missed class this week. If I’m not in class, I may as well be out enjoying Venice, but all I can manage at the moment is the walk from my bed to the kitchen to make tea, to my sofa.
Here are some of the things I have been doing to try to get myself better.
Soup to heal
This started off as a BBC Good Food recipe years ago, which I have changed and edited as I’ve gone along, made it simpler, or just done it with what I had in the house. And this is the ‘recipe’ I have landed on as ‘perfect’ in my eyes and what works for me when I’m feeling unwell.
Serves 2-4 (?), or one unwell person for a day or two.
What you will need:
Chicken legs on the bone, as many as you like. The more the better. (I think I must have had around 4 or 5 in mine which lasted about 2 lunches and a dinner?)
Celery x 3 (or more) sticks
Carrot x 3
Onions x 2-3
Salt 1 tablespoon
Method:
I am very aware that this is a very rough approximation type of recipe.
Take a big pot, probably the biggest you have? At least big enough for the amount of 3+ bowls of soup. Best if you have a lid for it.
a) Wash, peel and halve the carrots.
b) Wash and ‘top and tail’ the celery sticks (ie. take away the super white bits and the leafy bits and the very limp skinny stem bits). Chop them into quarters.
c) Peel the onion(s), chop away the part with the roots and the top, halve them.
Fill the pot with water about half or 3/4 full? A bit more than the amount you would want for your soup because some water will evaporate off and you need it to be enough to cover your chicken and veg. Put the chicken legs in and turn on the heat. As the froth begins (you will see it almost looks like soap bubbles), take a large metal spoon and scoop it away/pour it down the drain.
When the chicken water comes to a boil, add in all the veg + a tablespoon of salt. Take the heat down to a simmer or at least a less aggressive bubble.
Cover the pot partially with the lid. Let it bubble away for an hour and a half (set the timer). But go back to check on it every so often, give it a little stir. Mush the carrots into smaller pieces if you like.
At this point the chicken is cooked and yummy. Should you wish to do so (and I would highly recommend) take out some of the legs (or you can sometimes even just do this while its all still in the soup pot), and take away some of the chicken meat. I like to have a little snack at this point (one and a half hours is a long time). So I tend to peel away the most juicy parts of the chicken, put it on a plate and have a little snack of warm juicy chicken, while letting the leg bones/ veg + still some chicken, continue to boil away in there in the pot.
Set your timer again for another hour to hour and a half. Let it continue to simmer with lid partially on. This is important because there are really good nutrients in the bones.
Once the time is up, turn off the heat. (Although I would strongly recommend boiling for even longer if you can, long is good). Get your ladel or big metal spoon out and ‘plate up’ your portion. I tend to try to avoid scooping up the bones if possible (technically you’re meant to strain it all off including the veg but I like it all a bit chunky), but if you get a bit of bone or cartilage in your bowl its ok - just put it to the side. It sounds gross, but honestly for me the knowledge that all the goodness has been coming out of the bones for all those hours, it makes me feel good.
Enjoy! Feel the goodness of the broth restoring you :)
I tend to then reuse/ boil for longer if needed (I want to double and triple check online if this is an OK thing to advise people to do - so don’t quote me on this!). But basically I have heard that you can boil this kind of soup for even 8 hours! I have done this and then had another portion for dinner…
If you don’t like salty then I would recommend adding less salt and more onion.
Cappelletti in brodo (broth)
This is a northern Italian thing, and I was aware of it before, but really I was introduced to (probably the best?) cappelletti and tortelli last January. In some places in the north (I was in Emilia Romagna), they not only eat these pasta parcels in a broth, but they will sometimes add little bit of red wine from their wine glass. Which I found amazing.
I ‘cheated’ a bit, but basically I bought a carton of pre-made beef broth, poured it into a pot in the way you would add water to the pot to make pasta. Once it was boiling, I added in the cappelletti pasta, they were ready in about 2min. I poured the ‘pasta soup’ into a bowl.
I didn't have an open bottle of red wine. What I did have was an open bottle of Prosecco from ages ago. I gave it a sniff, it seemed OK (?), and dear reader, please do not judge me too much, but I added a tiny little splash of Prosecco into the broth. It tasted amazing. Then once it cooled a little more, I added some olive oil and grated parmesan on top.
I am so so sorry to all my Italian friends, I know this is probably completely wrong. Or is it? Oh well, it felt healing to me and I would highly recommend!
Other healing
Other than these two dishes, I am drinking an inordinate amount of teas which call themselves ‘probiotic’ or ‘immune’ (who knows if they really do anything), scrolling random stuff online, listening to audiobooks. For now it’s been Stephen Fry reading the full Sherlock Holmes collection, and Meryl Streep reading Heartburn by Nora Ephron. I have also downloaded the audiobook of Dolly Alderton’s new book Good Material, and some Christmas murder mystery type thing. Also been listening to Sentimental Garbage podcast on Robbie Williams.
(During my sick leave, I did end up watching a lot of the Gaza court case - of course this makes sense since my masters is in human rights - but I cannot process watching everything about it all the time. I would prefer to share mostly light and cosy things here for now, but that’s not because I am ignoring other world events or don’t think they are important. I feel deeply sad about it, as I think, we all do somehow. I’m working through finding [even just small] ways to take action.)
Here are some other things I’m liking
This is an app some of my fellow students recommended to me - it is an app which connects people needing sighted support with volunteers and companies anywhere in the world. Basically it is a way that you can help support someone who might need a little help with visual support, and equally those who are blind or low sighted can request video support at any time. It’s a lovely idea. I haven't used this in practice yet so am very curious about how this works in practice, how users find it and what professionals in the field think about it.
The Traitors TV Show on the BBC
I am completely hooked. Completely.
I love that it’s like Cluedo or Werewolf, and that it’s really just about human psychology, and how people trust people or work in groups. It is FASCINATING.
Side note: I was so satisfied when I had a hunch that this was a Dutch reality TV invention, and Wikipedia confirmed my suspicions. (They also invented Big Brother, The Voice etc, the latter of which one of my Dutch friends informs me has been ‘cancelled’ in the Netherlands.).
Style stuff
One of my favourite newsletters The Aram, recommended some things like bags, style, skincare etc, and I absolutely loved it because it felt like something closer to when I would buy a fashion magazine (which I am really haven’t done for a very long time).
Quite a few people around me have been talking about Big Sister Swap - a service where you send the clothes you don’t want anymore to them, do a style quiz, and they send you back (other 2nd hand) clothes roughly with the same value as the ones you sent. I am very curious about this!
I haven’t really managed to find my style over the last years, and I would really like to try to find a way of cutting down my wardrobe to things I actually wear.
Tips welcome.
Over Christmas I watched this and thought it was absolutely wonderful. I know it’s meant for kids, but the animation/voice/music skill here was wonderful. But maybe I’m biased because it was such a nostalgia trip and I grew up with this book.
The madness of my current schedule means I haven’t really managed to make this newsletter weekly on a Sunday, but hopefully once I get more into a routine in February, I will be able to.
C.