Rave Review Chicken Soup

I want to tell you what happened Monday and then I want to tell you about the soup, because the soup came after, and the soup is the only useful thing I have done with my hands since.

The sentencing hearing was Monday January ninth at ten o’clock in courtroom three of the Tulsa County Courthouse on Denver Avenue. Mama drove. I sat in the passenger seat. Mama held the steering wheel with both hands and we did not talk on the drive in. Aunt Tammy met us in the lobby. Mrs. Patel met us at the courtroom door. Cody was already inside, in the dark blue suit Aunt Tammy had bought him from JCPenney the week before, with the brown leather shoes Mr. Garcia had given him at the auto-body shop’s Christmas dinner. He looked like a young man going to a job interview. He was. The job was the rest of his life.

I am not going to walk through the hearing in detail. I am going to write what I want to keep on the page. Mama held my hand for the entire ninety minutes the proceedings took. Mrs. Patel argued for the deferred sentence. The prosecutor argued for the custodial sentence. The probation officer’s report — Ms. Ellis’s report — was, the judge said, very strong. The judge said the original charge had been a serious felony. The judge said the youthful-offender designation was, in this case, the difference between county time and a longer adult sentence. The judge said Cody could appeal for re-sentencing in six months if he completed certain programs in custody.

And then the judge said the words twenty-four months in the Tulsa County Youthful Offender Unit and the gavel came down at ten-fifteen and the rest of my life moved into a different room.

The bailiff allowed Cody to hug Mama in the holding area for ninety seconds before they took him into custody. He hugged her hard. He kissed the top of her head. He said, Mama, you raised me right. I will come back to you. Mama did not cry. She held his face in both of her hands. She said, I know you will, baby. I know you will. Then they took him.

I want to write down that he is eligible for release at twenty-two months for good behavior, with the remaining two months on supervised probation. The math comes out to a release date in November of 2018 if everything goes the way it is supposed to. I have written the date in the calendar in the closet, in red, on November twelfth, with a circle around it. The X marks for the ninety days are still on the wall, all of them now crossed off. The new countdown is six hundred and seventy days, and I am not going to mark each one with an X because I do not have the energy to look at six hundred and seventy boxes on a wall.

I came home from the courthouse with Mama at three-thirty Monday afternoon. We sat at the kitchen table without taking off our coats and we did not say anything for I do not know how long. Mama got up at some point and said, I have to go to work tomorrow, baby. I am going to bed. She went to her room. I sat at the kitchen table alone until eight o’clock. I did not eat. I did not turn on the radio. I did not turn on the lights when the sun went down. I just sat at the table.

And then it was Tuesday. And Tuesday I had to figure out how to be a person again. So I went to school. I sat in classes. I came home. Mama was at her shift. I stood in the kitchen at three-thirty in the afternoon and I looked at the empty kitchen table and I decided that I had to make dinner because dinner is the only thing I know how to do that proves the household is still a household. So I made chicken soup.

The recipe was Taste of Home’s Rave Review Chicken Soup, which I had had in my notebook since November because Mrs. Tilford from First Baptist had handed me a copy of Taste of Home magazine the day I dropped off her cookie tin and said the chicken soup recipe in it was, and I quote, the chicken soup that fixes things. I had been holding onto it for a week like that. I had not made it yet. Tuesday was the day to make it.

The math: a six-pack of chicken thighs from the markdown rack, $3.20. Three carrots from the bag in the fridge, $0.40. Three stalks of celery from the bag in the fridge, $0.50. A small yellow onion, $0.20. Three cloves of garlic, free from the bulb. A few sprigs of fresh dill from a small bunch I bought at Aldi for $1.49 (the rest froze for next time). Eight ounces of egg noodles, $0.99. Six cups of chicken broth from bouillon cubes dissolved in water, about $0.40 worth. Salt, pepper, two bay leaves from the spice rack. Total cost: about $7.20 for a pot that fed Mama and me for three dinners.

The technique is the slow building of a real chicken soup. You start by browning the chicken thighs in the soup pot with a little oil over medium heat — you do not need to fully cook them, just brown the skin to develop flavor. You take the chicken out. You add the diced onion, carrot, celery, and minced garlic to the pot in the chicken fat and you sweat them for five minutes until soft. You return the chicken to the pot. You add the chicken broth, the bay leaves, and a long pinch of salt. You simmer the whole thing gently for thirty minutes until the chicken is cooked through and falling off the bone.

You take the chicken out, set it on a plate, and let it cool for a few minutes. You shred the meat off the bones with two forks (the bones go back in the pot for another fifteen minutes of simmering, then get fished out and discarded; the bones in the broth are what makes the soup taste like a real soup, not like canned). You add the shredded chicken back to the pot. You add the egg noodles. You simmer for eight more minutes until the noodles are tender. You stir in the chopped dill at the end, off the heat. You salt to taste.

The pot was on the stove at four-thirty Tuesday afternoon. The kitchen smelled like a chicken soup is supposed to smell — the deep, savory, slightly herby, slightly oniony smell that the chicken soup of every grandmother has produced in every kitchen for the last two centuries. The smell did not fix anything. The smell did make the kitchen feel like a kitchen again.

Mama got home at seven-thirty. She walked in the back door. She stopped in the kitchen doorway. She looked at the pot on the stove. She looked at me. She looked at the kitchen table where there were two settings instead of three. She did not say anything. She went to her room and changed out of her work polo. She came back to the kitchen and sat at the table at the seat that had been hers for a year and a half. I sat at my seat. The third chair, Cody’s, was empty.

I served the soup in two bowls. Mama and I ate at the kitchen table for forty minutes in the kind of quiet that I am going to have to learn to live in for the next twenty-two months. The soup was good. The soup was warm. The soup was salty and herby and full of soft noodles and shredded chicken and tender carrots. The soup did not fix anything. The soup did keep us at the table for forty minutes. I am writing that down because keeping us at the table is the work, and the work is going to be the work for a long time, and the soup — for tonight at least — was enough to do it.

The pot is on the stove. There are two more dinners’ worth of soup left. I am going to eat it Wednesday and Thursday. I am going to start saving for the Saturday bus to Tulsa for the first jail visit, which is six days from now. The basil plant is still on the windowsill. Mama is asleep. The third chair is going to stay empty for a while. We are going to keep cooking.

The recipe is below, the way Taste of Home wrote it. The trick I want you to keep is the bones — do not skip the fifteen-minute extra simmer with the bones in the broth. Bones are what make a chicken soup taste like a chicken soup. The fresh dill at the end is also non-negotiable; dried dill is a different food. Make this on a night you need a kitchen to feel like a kitchen. Some recipes do that work better than others. This is one of the ones that does.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 45 min | Total Time: 1 hr | Servings: 6

Ingredients

1 1/2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts or thighs
6 cups low-sodium chicken broth
2 cups water
3 medium carrots, peeled and sliced
3 stalks celery, sliced
1 medium yellow onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 cups egg noodles or small pasta
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried parsley
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste
1 tablespoon olive oil or butter

Instructions

Sauté the vegetables. In a large pot over medium heat, warm the olive oil. Add the onion, carrots, and celery and cook for 5–7 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the onion softens. Add the garlic and cook another 30 seconds until fragrant.
Add chicken and liquid. Place the chicken breasts (or thighs) into the pot whole. Pour in the broth and water. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, then reduce heat to a gentle simmer.
Simmer the chicken. Cover and simmer for 20–25 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through and reaches an internal temperature of 165°F.
Shred the chicken. Remove the chicken with tongs and transfer to a cutting board. Use two forks to shred it into bite-sized pieces, then return the shredded chicken to the pot.
Add noodles and season. Stir in the egg noodles, thyme, parsley, salt, and pepper. Simmer uncovered for 8–10 minutes, or until the noodles are tender.
Taste and serve. Adjust seasoning as needed. Ladle into bowls and serve hot. Pairs well with crackers, crusty bread, or a simple piece of buttered toast.

Nutrition (per serving)

Rave Review Chicken Soup — The Soup for the Night the Chair Stays Empty