Chicken Soup

This is a warning, the following post may not be well advised for those with very weak stomachs. However if you are among the older generation, you may well laugh at my own squeamishness. Second warning, at least one chicken was indeed harmed in the events leading up to this post. I myself did not do the harming of said bird, but was in full agreement with its demise.

So we went to Burkina Faso last week for meetings with our fellow colleagues. That is the country just north of ours. It is also the country whose national language I am trying to learn and home and birth place of my friend Agira. She traveled with us and I was very happy to spend some time with her family before the meetings began. I ate all sorts of interesting things that may or may not have been the catalyst for this post.

To make an incredibly long and disgusting story slightly less so, let's leave it at I came back with a doozy of a stomach ache. Everybody has had some measure of problems, but Karis left here with hers and everybody else usually suffers at least some with travel in West Africa. I had decided that eating was not really something I cared to do any longer and spending insane amounts of time in the rest room became my favorite pastime. After retrieving enough meds to take down a small army, I am on the mend, but eating is still something I could gladly do without were I making decisions only for myself. As things stand, I have more to think of than just me and so I'm putting forth the effort to do what I should.

So I finally convinced myself that some chicken noodle soup is what my mom would make for me and thus something that I as a good mom should do for my little tag along. Unfortunately Mr. Campbell has not made the trip across the ocean as of yet. I'm fully prepared to pay for his plane ride for a vision trip of what a little "mmm mmm good" could do for this continent, but I'm having a little trouble making contact.

With that said, you know that a little homecooking will require slightly more than the usual can opener. My sad stomach hadn't clearly thought out what this particular meal would encompass. Now let me say, we are fortunate enough to live in a big city where my options are less limited, so I should be thankful for what I didn't have to do. Cooking chicken for me at least does not involve a chopping block or removal of feathers. That is an option, but something I am fully prepared to pay another to have done outside of my presence. In fact, quite frequent an eager salesman sticks a handful of cluckers upside down in front of my face in the market. He wants me to look at the feet and admire his lovely birds. I've got NO idea what I'm supposed to be looking for in chicken feet, but let me tell you that those nasty claws are my least favorite part of the bird. So instead of a very impressed customer, he usually winds up with a pretty hostile white lady and a suggestion to remove his merchandise from my line of sight! I prefer to get my birds at the grocery store where at least life and feathers have both been removed from my dinner. Then all I have to do is remove head, feet and guts. If I'm smart, I've done this on a day when my beautiful, dear friend is at my house and hauls all of those things away and I don't even have to look at it!

Anyway, the last bird I bought had actually been relieved of all that but the guts, a fact I failed to consider when choosing my menu. So now I wind up with a thawed bird, a recipe and a job to do. Internal organs are not things I wish to see, touch or eat. I know I would if I was hungry enough or in an African home, but I'm not. So queasy stomach and all, I stuck my hand in the rear end of a chicken to remove organs of all nature, which I can now easily identify. However that is not a good idea when not feeling so great anyway.

The tale all told, we had some pretty good chicken soup for lunch today, but I'm not sure it had the same stomach settling abilities as I was expecting.

I'm doing better now, just thought you might be amused by my culinary exploits.
Love to all,
Heather