Connections: Chicken Soup
What makes you choose chicken noodle soup rather than gazpacho when they appear next to each other at your favorite takeout shop? Is it mood or weather? One is the quintessential comfort food, the other somehow jaunty and zingy, bringing to mind an artists’ lunch under an arbor in Andalusia. Both soups were on a refrigerator shelf at Breadzilla earlier this week, which may have indicated either that the cooks, arriving in the kitchen that morning, decided to hedge their bets on the weather, or that they might share the ambivalence some of us feel about September.
The crowds and the mayhem are gone, at least on weekdays. We’re all walking around congratulating one another on having survived the invasion of the August People. Sunny September afternoons are perfect for all those things you couldn’t find time to do during the summer, like browsing through the Bargain Box or dead-heading the last of the roses. An added bonus are cooler nights, good for sleeping. On the other hand, September is the start of the hurricane season, as evidenced by Hermine just last week. This month can either feel like the end of something (fleeting summers, and winter drawing near) or like a new beginning (that start-of-the-school-year mood that lasts many decades after our own schooldays are over).
On the morning I chose chicken noodle soup over gazpacho — casting a vote for autumn, as it were — Hillary Clinton was resting at home, having been felled by pneumonia. It’s entirely possible that I went for the chicken soup subconsciously, as I was feeling rather sorry for her and afraid that a common illness like pneumonia could set back her campaign and wind up having a negative effect on her chances of winning the presidency. Hillary could use some soup. She seems like a soup person.
Donald Trump’s favorite foods, I read, are Filet-o-Fish sandwiches from McDonald’s and Diet Coke. I’ll leave you to ponder that a moment.
Later in the week I went to the Iacono Farm on Long Lane to buy some chicken and found myself telling Eileen Iacono that my grandmother, who was from the old country, alarmed me as a child when I saw her throw chicken feet into the soup pot, claws and all. She told me they were needed to thicken the broth and said I shouldn’t worry because they had been scrubbed. I checked this information out with Mrs. Iacono, who must surely be a chicken-soup expert, and she nodded in affirmation.
I can’t think of any other food with as meritorious a reputation as chicken soup. Science says it’s not just good for the soul, it can help you heal from a head cold.
Still thinking about Mrs. Clinton and her need for a hot bowl of chicken soup, I went looking for the origin of the phrase “a chicken in every pot,” which I understood was political. The phrase sometimes has been attributed to Herbert Hoover, the 31st president of the United States, who took office in 1929 just as the Depression got under way. Although government policies that preceded him contributed to the crash, Hoover was blamed for the nation’s suffering and roundly defeated by Franklin Roosevelt four years later.
A “Vote for Hoover” advertisement for his re-election described his administration as having “restored financial confidence and enthusiasm, changed credit from a rich man’s privilege to a common utility. . . .” It also claimed “Republican prosperity has . . . silenced discontent, put the proverbial ‘chicken in every pot,’ and a car in every backyard, to boot.” What shall we do if Trump is elected, and the stock markets — as predicted — take a hasty dive? A Filet-o-Fish on every fork?