Chicken Soup with Spaetzle

June, and the lockdown has been in effect for three months, and the three months have aged me in ways that the mirror shows and the scale confirms and the body feels in the particular exhaustion of a woman who has not had a day off since March. The library remains closed. Ruth remains at home. The household remains sealed. And I remain at the stove, the counter, the sink, the table, the stove again, the relentless circuit of a kitchen that feeds five people three times a day and that has become both my prison and my cathedral.

The exhaustion is real. I write it here because writing it makes it visible, and visibility is the first step toward asking for help, and asking for help is the thing that Simmons women do not do, and the not-doing is both our strength and our disease — the disease of self-sufficiency that runs in this family the way Alzheimer's runs in other families, silently, progressively, taking away the ability to say "I need help" until the inability is its own kind of impairment.

James cooked dinner every night this week. He did not announce it. He did not ask. He simply appeared in the kitchen at five PM with the determination of a young man who has decided that his mother will sit down tonight, and the sitting down will not be a gift but a requirement, and the requirement will be enforced by the appearance of shrimp and grits on the table at six-thirty, made by hands that learned the recipe at this stove from the woman they are now relieving.

Carrie has been spending her days reading — voraciously, indiscriminately, the way I read when I was eighteen and the library was my sanctuary and the books were the bridge between Beaufort and everywhere else. She is reading Japanese literature (Murakami, Yoshimoto, Ogawa), Southern literature (Welty, O'Connor, Walker), and whatever else she finds on the shelves that Robert built and that I filled. The reading is the summer program she designed for herself, and the design is better than any institution could have produced.

I made nothing this week. James cooked. Carrie made lunch. Robert grilled. And I sat at the kitchen table and ate what they made and wrote in the journal while they cooked, and the sitting was the rest I needed, and the rest was the gift, and the gift was given by children and a husband who saw that the woman who feeds them needed, finally, to be fed.

James made shrimp and grits the night that broke me open, but it was this soup — made the following evening, quieter, slower, the kind of thing that asks nothing of the person eating it — that I kept thinking about as the week went on and the sitting-down became something I was learning to do without guilt. Chicken soup with spaetzle is the food of being taken care of: the broth is someone else’s patience, the dumplings are someone else’s hands, and the bowl that arrives in front of you is proof that you are, at last, allowed to be the one who is fed. I’m writing the recipe here so I have it, and so James has it, and so the next Simmons woman who forgets to ask for help might find it and remember what it feels like to sit down.

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 45 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour 5 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 medium yellow onion, diced
3 medium carrots, peeled and sliced into rounds
3 stalks celery, sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
8 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1 1/2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves (or 1/2 teaspoon dried)
1 bay leaf
Salt and black pepper to taste
2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped, for serving
For the spaetzle:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 large eggs
1/2 cup whole milk

Instructions

Build the base. Melt butter in a large Dutch oven or heavy pot over medium heat. Add onion, carrots, and celery. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables have softened, about 8 minutes. Add garlic and cook 1 minute more.
Simmer the chicken. Pour in the chicken broth and add the chicken thighs, thyme, and bay leaf. Bring to a gentle boil, then reduce heat to a low simmer. Cook uncovered for 25 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through and tender.
Shred the chicken. Remove the chicken thighs with tongs and transfer to a cutting board. Discard the bay leaf. Use two forks to shred the chicken into bite-sized pieces, then return it to the pot. Season the broth with salt and pepper.
Make the spaetzle batter. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, salt, and nutmeg. In a small bowl, beat the eggs with the milk. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir until a thick, slightly sticky batter forms. Let rest 5 minutes.
Cook the spaetzle. Bring the soup back to a gentle boil. Working in batches, press the spaetzle batter through a colander or spaetzle maker held directly over the pot, letting the small dumplings drop straight into the simmering broth. Cook 3–4 minutes, until the spaetzle float and are cooked through. Repeat until all batter is used.
Finish and serve. Taste and adjust seasoning. Ladle into bowls and top with fresh parsley. Serve immediately, with good bread alongside if you like.

Nutrition (per serving)

Chicken Soup with Spaetzle — The Week My Family Fed Me