In an embarrassing fit of self-pity, I posted my status on FaceBook this morning as recuperating from a killer migraine that attacked me in the middle of Saturday night and turned me into a blob of raw nerve endings and a vampiric allergy to the sun until early Sunday evening.  Much to my chagrin, many concerned friends offered condolences (just the gals – see, not only did God take away that damn rib, he gave us the propensity for migraines - yeah, great. . .) and info about new drugs (a spray being the most intriguing – thanks Miriam!).

See, just as I hate my FaceBook self for wasting time with quizzes like “Which member of the Ramones are you most like?” – I hate myself when I put some malady in my status.  Like the little co-dependent troll that exists within me cannot stand it if I’ve suffered anything and everyone doesn’t know about it.   Yeah, it’s all me and I need to get control over that, but in the meantime I’m casting about for sympathy like a hypochondriac in the terminal ward. 

So, anyway, when I realized that I could stand upright around about 3:30 Sunday afternoon, I knew that I needed some chicken soup for my delicate condition.  As I have posted before, I have a really bad habit of waiting until the last minute to start cooking things that really need more time than I’ve allotted.  Therefore, when at 3:30 pm, I realized that the only chicken in the house was a completely frozen whole fryer, I did the only thing Delia would do: I dragged the sucker out and stuck it in a bowl in the sink to run cold water over it – completely in defiance of any sissy-anti-salmonella training I may have had while getting my food service manager certification.  It’s not really a violation of Health Department rules if you’re just poisoning yourself, is it? 

As the time ran on, and as it became more apparent that I would not be eating anything approximating soup until midnight, I cranked the hot water up a bit and proceeded to attack the rock-solid rooster with my hands.  I knew if I could just get the darn thing open, then the water would do a better job of defrosting from the inside.   It was an ugly battle (with just a touch of the obscene as I tried to shove my hand up the bottom of the bird to loosen the giblets) and I have bruises to prove it; but in the end I finally got it defrosted enough to pop it into my stock pot for poaching a la Jacques Pepin (in “Jacques and Julia’s Cooking at Home” – excellent book and you should own it).

Since I had not been shopping in recent memory and my husband had been gone since Thursday hunting the elusive wild turkey (Kel-0, Turkey-1), the only soup ingredients I had on hand were: the chicken itself; water; half of a bermuda onion; dried herbs; frozen celery bits.  No carrots, no real onion, no fresh parsley.  In short, I really should have just made a marmite sandwich.  But the tummy was still flip-flopping from the drugs and the migraine and I didn’t trust my equilibrium to drive, so dammit, I was going to have chicken soup!

Jacques’ poaching method is pretty simple: take your bird plus all the proper things for soup (including all the stuff I didn’t have), put into large stock pot with water and 1 cup of white wine (I used vermouth).  Put a colander on top of everything so that both bird and veggies stay submerged, cover and bring to a boil.  Then boil gently for 20 minutes, remove from heat and leave, covered, for 45 minutes.  Voila!  Tender, moist chicken falling off the bone and delicious stock to reduce further for soup. 

I blame no one but myself.  My bird was done, but he was about as overcooked as one can get via poaching.  Also, the stock would need some more reducing and doctoring before it was ready for soup and, queasily looking at the bits of fat and other floaties I couldn’t identify in the stock (I was supposed to remove all the fat from the bird, but only got the big blobs), I realized that I was in no condition to subject anymore food to my addled ministrations.

Slightly nauseous, and with the hint of a return engagment from the migraine, at 8:00 or so, I settled for a tough, flavorless chicken breast and some leftover rice.  Feeling perfectly miserable, but still hungry, I chewed my chicken and choked down the dry rice.  I popped one more magic migraine pill (they only work if you take them as soon as you think you’re getting a migraine – hence their earlier ineffectiveness – when you wake UP with a migraine, you haven’t had the chance to take evasive action) and toddled off to bed around 9:30.

My house smelled like overcooked chicken this morning and the dogs nosed the garbage can where the carcass lay, like the victim of some sordid crime.  I was still pretty wobbly from the meds and packed my tuna-and-hard-boiled-egg lunch with some trepidation.  There was chicken left, but I didn’t want to deal with it today – I really wanted soup.  By the time I got to court, the threat of further migraine had passed, but I was still feeling a little tender and oogy. 

This court is in a very small town possessed of no big grocery stores, but one very good Mexican bakery that also serves a full menu of traditional Mexican food.  By around 11 am, I knew that I needed soup (still) and that albondigas was exactly the thing for me.   The Mexican version of that healing potion my mother used to call “Jewish penicillin,” albondigas is chicken soup of the highest order.   The clerks told me that the bakery had very good albondigas as well as posole and that they were open on Mondays (a rarity for lots of Mexican restaurants around here).

I didn’t get to leave the courthouse until noon – and by then I felt like my albondigas mission had become a matter of life-and-death.  My body had put up with some serious abuse in the last couple of days and the only potion that could truly heal it was the magical elixir of chicken broth, tiny meatballs, rice and chiles that is albondigas.

My Matrix bumped painfully along the potholed main street as I sped to my destination – the bakery was just on the other side of the tracks, a blue building, the girls told me.   A few minutes later, I pulled up in front of the second-to-last building on this side of the road – beyond lay an empty, desolate expanse of dirt.   The brightly-colored building looked improbably like a fortress in the harsh, flat sunlight, with bars on the windows, concertina wire on the roof and a flat, unfriendly front – in my experience a promising sign of good Mexican food and I was encouraged.  However, my car was the only one on the street in front and the windows looked ominously black.  I could smell no comforting odor of masa or carne asada . . . hmmm, maybe they have really good air filters?

I got out of the car, very aware of my conspicuous presence – white lady with blonde hair, professional clothes and, for god’s sake, a pink purse, but too desperate for my current culinary grail to care too much.   A lot of the towns I work in are relatively poor and rural, as well as being populated mostly by Hispanic or Native Americans, so I am used to being the sore thumb – especially when I want to get real Mexican food.

When I approached I realized that the neon “Open” sign was dark and lifeless - regardless, I tried the steel security door only to find that it was tightly locked.  The sign on the door proudly indicated that hours on Monday were 10-7.  I actually looked at my watch, not quite convinced that it was 2 hours past opening.  My stomach lurched, in hunger as well as with some residual nausea, and I dejectedly walked back to my car, pink purse banging against my calves.  

I made one half-hearted swing around town looking for some light at the end of my particular tunnel and, finding none, drove back to the courthouse.  I walked directly from my parked car over to the Circle K next door and, knowing it was a bad idea, bought a microwaveable tub of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup.  Perhaps I wished to punish myself for perpetrating that poulty hate-crime last night.  After only four slurps of nuked and salty, strangely yellow broth (I can’t bring myself to eat the cubes of alien flesh they call “chicken”) I felt that I had done my penance and pitched the foul thing in the garbage.

As if by divine hand, my husband called me just as I glumly dug into my low-fat dry tuna and hardboiled egg “salad.”   Having been foiled by the wily turkey, he was on his way home.   Not only was he on his way home, but he would be home around 3 pm, plenty of time to make dinner.   I confessed my involvement in the shameful display of culinary ineptitude last night, wanting to prepare him for the rubbery pieces of chicken and gigantic stock pot in the fridge.    When I told him there was a big pot of stock, and broadly hinted that he could probably do something with that, at least (perhaps some soup, I whined), he laughed at me, and then said the magical words:  “Of course, I’ll make you albondigas.”

So now all I have to do is make it through the rest of the afternoon and safely pilot my car up the dusty road to my home where I know all things will be made well by the return of my husband, and  the wonderful smell and taste of, finally, albondigas. 

I may just live after all.