Dispatch from the Sickbed

Even Kitchen Shrinks get the Achoos

Dear cooks,

I knew there was a danger of it happening when, an hour after my having shared a lemonade with a straw with my son, he came down with a fever of 101. I was alright the following day and, following a strict regimen of Wellness Formula every few hours, drops of echinacea, and Neti Pots, I thought I might have gotten out ahead of it. I didn’t. I have the grip, the croup, the flu. I have fevers and shivers and sweats and a cough that sounds like a seal. Point is, I can’t answer advice with anything like my usual care. Here, instead, is a column I wrote for the New York Times Magazine back in 2014.

Eat: Delicious Medicine for the Body and Soul

By Tamar Adler

Nov. 19, 2014

Like most people I know, I spent much of the autumn . . . sick. Sick with the sort of mild but hydra-headed illness that in me, and in other people of general good health, eventually beats its own retreat. I carried on — stoically, I hope — gripped by a deep desire, same as everyone’s, to “get well soon.”

Patience, of course, is the best option. Beyond that, there are the myriad pharmaceutically formulated syrups and pills that relieve symptoms, often effectively. But no matter the aspirin or ephedrine content, none of these can counteract the flattening of the spirit and deadening of joy in which illness results. For this, I depend on a different means, one that is completely in my control: making meals I trust to hasten healing. (I am content to let the question of why they help remain a mystery; what matters is how I can feed and eat a path back to wellness.)

I like to turn to the tales of Old Wives, whose wisdom can be roughly ordered into: palliatives, therapeutics, restoratives and (for trying to stave off the next bout) preventives. A version of the soft, bland pastina my mother served me is a typical palliative. Other calming, classic examples are toasted bread, topped with sugar and soaked liberally in warm milk; any light and creamy bread or rice pudding; hot milk and honey, with or without whiskey (with!); and chicken broth. The last, I’m told, has been medically “proven” to help, though ask any child, and she’ll tell you it was proven at her first congested sip. Go east, and grandmothers will treat you with ginger and miso, kimchi and fermented teas.

I lay bets, too, with the let-the-devils-duke-it-outers, who use pungent foods to vanquish the demon illness inside. A chef friend takes a can of Campbell’s tomato soup, presses four garlic cloves into it and eats it very hot. Straight vinegar and whole raw onions or garlic also have devotees. Then there is the following — long, specific and offering some deliverance — sent to me recently by a very spiritual art dealer: “It’s got to be soup, with whole cloves of garlic, onions, chicken stock. Heat is important, and wanting to sweat like with vindaloo but easier on the digestion. Asian hot sauce and two free range eggs, which I poach in the brew. Then hope springs eternal.” Another friend advises: honey and garlic together. How? I forget, but I can see it working and being, in its way, good.

Strangely useful, too, is the mystical ancient theory that the body is composed of four humors. A terrifying book on the Black Death (which humoral theory could not, alas, relieve) provides a ready summary: blood was “hot and moist, like air,” while phlegm was “cold and moist, like water”; yellow bile was “hot and dry, like fire,” and black bile “cold and dry, like earth.” When sick, you ate dry to combat moisture, moist to fight internal aridity. I neither believe nor disbelieve, but perceive a truth: What is curative for one person may not be for another with identical symptoms.

I have one preventive practice: eating wild plants, which Old Wives from every age insist into stews, salads and decoctions. The most appealing prescription I’ve read is this, by Patience Gray, from Carrara in Tuscany, where she lived and where folkloric medicine and gastronomical habit mingled: “Chi vo far ‘na bona zena i magn’un erb’ d’tut la mena,” or “Who wants to eat a good supper should eat a weed of every kind.” (Emphasis mine; I like dandelion greens and wild nettles on my plate, with olive oil, and can’t abide even the best-intentioned herbalist guidance to buy them as pills at drugstores.) This, as she writes, “puts the matter in a nutshell, diversity being as important in weeds as it is in human beings.”

My health soup, described below, mixes many of the wisdoms above. I don’t recall how I came to its particular composition, beyond my intuition and the practicality of using what I had. When I’ve done any research on it, out of vain curiosity, I’ve found that others have followed their noses to similar creations.

When I first made this soup, my boyfriend (now my husband) was suffering with stuffed-up everything. It was my introductory shift as his nurse; and in nervous preparation, I emptied two spice packets from instant noodle soup into the pot. It did what was required of it, and he is still with us. My recipe omits the packets, but if you are nervous and have any near, their chemical potency won’t hurt and might help.

I continue to add Old Wives’ cures to my repertoire. A Tunisian recently made me vow to medicate myself with strong mint tea if I coughed even once. A Chinese doctor examined my tongue, unsolicited, and prescribed monthly doses of lamb. I listen, not because I am in pursuit of more folklore but because I aspire to a deep supply of culinary ways to scratch whatever itches. My autumnal illness eventually cleared. But who’s to say whether it was Father Time or the Old Wives who revived me?

Here’s the recipe. As for me, I’m eating my mom’s chocolate chip cookies and drinking orange juice, which is all the health soup the day permits.