This post is dedicated to the awesomness of which we call soup.
Why do people crave soup?
It seems that sickness is everywhere I look lately.
Even I was struck down a few weeks ago with a sickness.
However mine only involved feeling like shit for 2 days,
losing my voice and then coughing like a manic for 9 days.
But this recent bug that is attacking everyone else is incredibly mean and nasty.
These sick people can't get out of bed,
they can't eat and they have trouble even holding down water.
I used to get sick like this a lot as a kid but in my adult life it's only ever happened once.
I think I was maybe 19ish years old.
I felt like I had been slowing dying for about 3 days.
I hadn't eaten or showered in that time and I was having a lot of trouble keeping water down.
The best I could do was hold little amounts of water in my mouth and even though
most of it dribbled out it seemed to be enough.
I really needed to see a doctor but I couldn't stand up without the
overpowering urge to fall to my knees and throw my head into the nearest
toilet/bowl/vase/any vessel capable of holding vomit.
After some calling around my girlfriend at the time discovered that
Auchenflower Medical Practice did after hours home visits.
I was half carried, half dragged out of the bedroom into the lounge area where
I slumped to floor then crawled onto the couch.
Quite literally as I was at this point on my hands and knees.
Finally the doctor arrived.
Hurrah I thought.
I could see the light at the end of this spew filled tunnel.
Oh hang on, that's not what I see.
What I actually see is the excruciatingly HOT sidekick-doctor that he has brought along.
She is young, quiet and looks clever. Like sexy clever.
Oh yeah, and here I am looking like I have the plague.
Complete with vomit on my sleeve.
He explains to me that he has some kind of miraculous medicine
and the quickest way for it to work is to inject it straight into my poor left butt cheek.
Fabulous.
But to be perfectly honest with you at this point I really didn't care
how terrible I looked.
I also wasn't worried about how giant that fucking needle was.
I even looked past the fact that a really hot girl was about to see my
ass in the exact opposite senario that I would have hoped for her to see it.
I honestly just wanted the vomiting to stop.
Which is why, as Dr Man was discussing the medical mumbo jumbo to Dr Smoking Hot,
I simply pulled down my pants, felt the chilly breeze hit my ass
and politely, if not desperately, begged
"Please just stick it in."
He obliged.
The next morning I awoke to a friend gently waving a bowl of
celery and lentil soup in front of my face.
I still felt unsure if I could hold anything down
but I soon found out that as soon as this magical soup touched my tongue
I could actually feel my energy levels rising.
It was exciting.
I was Mario and I had just aborbed a giant red and white mushroom.
I lived on that soup for the next 2 days and recovered quickly.
Now whenever I feel really sick or even just depleted of energy I make this soup
(or have someone make it for me)
So I thought I would share it with you.
Celery & Lentil Soup
1 large onion, chopped
4 cloves of garlic, diced
2 carrots, cubed
1 1/2 cups of dried red lentils, soaked for at least an hour in cold water
3 cups vege stock (approx)
4-5 sticks of celery, roughly chopped
1 sachet of Bouquet Garni
olive oil
pepper to season
parsley for garnish (but when you're sick that shit doesn't matter)
Heat the oil on medium and add your onion.
Once softened (dont let it burn) add your carrots, celery,
soaked lentils and garlic.
Mix together then add vege stock and bouquet garni sachet.
Give it a stir then cover and gently simmer for 25-30 min
Remove the sachet.
To break up the celery and carrot chunks I just use a potato masher.
But one of those hand held shuuzzzing things
that people usually use to pulverize chunky soup work well too.
Just don't get carried away.
Let me be clear, you dont want your soup to be a paste.
Just aim for the celery and carrot chunks.
Let the lentils be lentils.
Garnish it if you must.
Now I have a confession.
I'm healthy right now and quite frankly simply too lazy to
cook and take photos of this soup myself so went google image searching.
I couldn't find an image that looks exactly like mine but here is one that's kinda close.
However because I use a large amount of celery mine always looks much more army green.
See how I said 'army green' instead of 'baby poo green'?
Because lets face it, no one wants to see the word 'poo' in a recipe.
Hope you don't get sick enough to need it!
