The cure of my ancestors.

I mentioned in my last post about my trip to PNG that I came back and caught a cold.  This was an almost immediate thing - I travelled home on Wednesday (alllllll day, leaving at 6.10 am and getting home at 10pm, all in the same time zone), and somewhere in the epic day of travel I started getting a headache.  The next morning I woke up with a sore throat, which soon turned into a sniffly-snuffly nose.  Only, I had to come in to uni on that Thursday and Friday, because I promised my students I would be available before their essays were due, that Friday night.  Would you believe that, despite the frantic emails I received the whole time I was away, not one of them came to my office?

I suspect that my illness may have stemmed from a 6 hour hike up a volcano in the rain, whereby I got completely drenched.  It was probably not helped by 16 hours spent in planes and airports.  Whatever caused it, I felt shitty.  I grew up using the middle class white cure for everything:


And, despite not having eaten Campbell's chicken noodle soup in something like 7 years, and despite being grossed about by it even when I did eat it, that is what I felt like on the worst day of this cold.  So, I came home from uni ridiculously early and set about making some soup which approximated the salty, yellow-ish stuff.

I made stock out of Massel chicken-style stock, some dijon mustard, oil (I remember Campbell's being pretty fatty), a bit of miso, and some turmeric for that bright yellow quality that sticks in my head.  I mixed 1/4 c. of gluten with 1/4 c. of water and broke off tiny chunks to replicate the icky-chewy chicken-ish bits.  I also added some chilli, and whole cloves of garlic, which is by no means authentic to the tinned stuff but sure is good for a cold.  Then I let the whole thing simmer away for about an hour, while I read a magazine.  Then I broke up some noodles from the asian grocery store, so they were about 1inch long, and put those in and let it cook till they were quite soft.  The result was surprisingly delicious.  I don't know how closely it resembles its inspiration, but it sure did make me feel better.

I made a lot, so when Andy came home a few days later and proceeded to catch the cold from me, I was able to heat up some soup and serve with freshly baked corn muffins.  I don't think he had the same memories attached to the tinned condensed soup, but he liked it anyways.