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Chicken Soup Memoirs:
Love in a Bowl
by Joy Rotondi
foodies™ Director & Soup Queen
I grew up, happily, in an Italian-American family, one
of four children. I thought we had a corner on life's pleasures. Our cheeks
were frequently kissed and pinched. We ate pizza fritta on Sunday morning,
Aunt Grace's pizzelles at Easter, and gnocchi all'Abbruzzesse before the
Christmas roast beef. Our lunch bags, filled daily with exotica, mystified
the P & J-with-the-crusts-cut-off crowd at the Pashley Elementary cafeteria.
But for me, the ultimate privilege of an orotund name was Nana and her chicken
soup.
I had the perfect grandmother and I had the perfect food. Now Nana has
never been outdone, but the universal nature of her magic potion didn't
leak out until the summer of my eighth year.
School let out and the family joined Nana and Papa in a rambling ark
of a house on Craigville Beach. We stomped on sand castles, pulled ticks
of the dog, ate too much mackerel, and stayed in the Cape Cod water until
our lips turned blue.
"You'll catch cold!" Nana prophesied
time after time as her "principessa" dashed by with streaming wet hair. Grandmothers
are always right. I was sequestered in a four-poster bed facing the sea.
My three rat-faced brothers were delighted
by my misfortune (there would be one less competing for the inflatable raft),
but they envied my special treatment. From the doorway of the sickroom,
they watched as Nana marched in bowl after bowl of soup: chicken soup with
rice, carrot pastina chicken soup, chicken soup with escarole and itty-bitty
meatballs, stracciatella, chicken soup with last night's tomato sauce, and,
the envy of envies, ALPHABET CHICKEN SOUP! Nana never served it up the same
way twice and it always went down like mother's milk. The rats at the door
weren't allowed one sip.
One morning my temperature reached a
Significant Number and I was bundled off to the local pediatrician by Mom's
Ambulance Service. Dr. Sugarman was very bald and very kind and he wore
a big, heavy ring on his finger with a red stone as smooth as his head.
He put me through the usual paces, turned to my mother and broke the news.
"Walking pneumonia," reported
Dr. Sugarman.
"Walking pneumonia!" my mother
repeated, unnecessarily. Aghast, she asked the cure.
"Jewish penicillin," replied
the good doctor.
"Jewish penicillin!" My mother
was quite worried, you see. "What's that?"
"Why, chicken soup of course!"
I fell deeply in love with Dr. Sugarman.
But I was confused. His name didn't end with a vowel, so how could he know
about Chicken Soup? As the truth dawned, as I took a giant step toward womanhood,
my mother and Dr. Sugarman discussed the relative merits of skimming the
fat off the top.
Ever since my remarkable recovery from
pneumonia, I turn to chicken soup in moments of need. As a child, the world's
best tasting medicine cleared up colds, settled stomachs, and tempered tantrums.
As an adult, I find it also minimizes jet lag, cures homesickness, and mends
broken hearts. Ask any grown-up about chicken soup and they'll tell you
a story: "How Not to Make a Matzoh Ball," "Chicken Soup and
the First Trimester," "Chicken Soup and the Man Who Wouldn't Leave."
However, most of the stories will be like mine, stories of grandmothers
and their secret potions for love in a bowl.
Since my coming of age in Dr. Sugarman's
office, I have been collecting chicken soup recipes from America's grandmothers
and grandchildren. All strengthen, all sooth. You needn't catch cold to
try them.
Click here for recipes.
Copyright 1997 All Rights Reserved