This is my Mom, she's my noodle!

Chicken Soup may be good for your soul, but don’t forget the noodles! 

By Carol L Hill 

So ever since I was a child one of my favorite meals to have was my grandmother’s chicken soup. She always packed it full of yummy goodies like carrots, celery, onions , chicken and honestly whatever else was in her grasp.

It always was a welcoming experience to go to my grandparents for the weekend, to help her prepare the soup, to smell it as it simmered to perfection on the stove, and to then sip, slurp, and slop it up! Yum...eeeeee 🤤 and what a joy it still brings me when I’m feeling ill to come home to a pot of simmering soup.

So it was, that last night after a day of endless Tom fuckery, I decided to make a pot of chicken soup . I wasn’t feeling particularly well mentally or emotionally and needed a bit of a boost. So started to prepare my pot of soup, carefully adding to it all of the important ingredients this particular situation and current state of dis-ease required.

You see, the wonderful thing about chicken soup is the ingredients. It’s the fact that you can blend a number of things together in one pot, you can boil and simmer them all together, and almost ALWAYS they come out better tasting then if you’d cooked them all separately. For within the pot, they need each other to make themselves taste better. So it’s not really all that important what goes in the pot because what ties it all together will make it all the better and all the more pleasing to our senses.

So, anyway,  I started my soup last night adding to it the ingredients I needed ( and let’s be honest the only ingredients I had available to me), and as they always are, they were the perfect ingredients for this particular situation. I added the following and in no particular order because it’s what went in last that REALLY tied it all together; I added

*Carrots 🥕 for clearer vision

*Broccoli 🥦 to breathe

*Onions 🧅 to produce cleansing tears

*Corn to help digest

*Garlic 🧄 herbs 🪴 and spices to give it flavor

*Chicken to build strength

And of course the water...the water to build the broth that binds it all together. You see the broth is the foundation. If the broth is to thin it becomes harder to sip and swallow because it’s just messy. If it’s to thick it’s harder to sip and swallow because it is simply to muddy. No, the broth has to be just right ! But the broth can't be the best constancy without the most important ingredient of all; the noodles

Why are the noodles so important? Well...glad you asked, it is because the noodles contain starch and starch helps to thicken and straighten things out. The noodles help tie it all together within the broth. Some people in our lives are our noodles they are the glue that holds us and our families ( our broth) together.

My noodle is my mom, who in this moment is fighting a very huge battle, but as noodles often do, she is bending and shaping into something else even more impressively delicious. My noodles is such a courageous soul, my noodles herself, comes from good stock; good broth and is probably why she and her cronies ( friends for those of you to young for that word) call themselves the Brothy Women!

What I’ve leaned over the years about making chicken soup is that there are lessons learned within each pot. What chicken soup has taught me most is to not forget to pay attention to the noodles in my life. To understand their place and presence and to know that from the broth the noodle thickens is where I gather my strength.

I’ve learned that we are all of varying flavors, textures, and consistencies but when we are blended into one simmering pot, we are with the help of our noodles, are a  tasty and healthy treat to be blessed with.

My hope is that you all identify and pay homage to your own noodles today and everyday. Know how important they are to the forming of your broth and take care to always add them to your chicken soup. 

With that I say...chicken soup with noodles anyone? 

Carol Hill is a mom, a long time nurse, certified professional  life and leadership development coach, a consultant, and Lead Happiness Ambassador and the owner/operator of Just Chill Custom Gifting By Carol.