That's right folks. Soup. In all of its glorious forms. Above is a bowl of slurp-worthy Oxtail Soup with Hand-Pulled Noodles from Lan Zhou Noodle House, situated on a well-worn block of East Broadway in Manhattan's Chinatown.
A bit more upscale, but deeply restorative just the same, was an order of the namesake soup at Ganso in Brooklyn, a heaping bowl of classic soy sauce broth, slow-braised pork shoulder and pork belly, ajitama egg and seasonal greens, shimmering like jewels over a tangle of ramen noodles.
Then there was a soul-satisfying cup of Mushroom Barley Soup at my local Eastern European diner. A necessary cup on a damp day.
And tonight, I expect to be be serving up warming portions of a tongue-tingling Chicken and Andouille Sausage Gumbo, straight from my kitchen. This is the kind of homemade soup that can cure all ills.
We'll see if it's enough to ward off this horrible flu that's been going around. But, just in case, I'll be getting a flu shot tomorrow. (And, I might get another dose of soup too!)