Chicken soup for the frazzled soul

When the world goes to pieces, I go to the kitchen. Cooking calms my rattled nerves.

Sipping my morning coffee, I stand at the kitchen counter, a menagerie of vegetables – carrots, celery, onions, and a handful of redskin potatoes – lined up like soldiers in front of the crockpot. Breakfast is barely over, but I’m peeling veggies like my life depends on it. Maybe it does. I scoot the cutting board into position and dig my favorite paring knife from the drawer.

“Whatcha making?” my husband asks.

“Not sure,” I say, because I can’t decide between chicken tortellini soup and its simpler cousin, chicken rice soup. All I know is that the morning air, thick with wildfire smoke, has left me unsettled. Is it safe to walk the dog? Not according to my weather app or my mini goldendoodle. My 11-year-old furball is wisely hunkered in a corner, his black button nose still twitching from the eerie,
plastic-scented haze that whooshed over him as he sprinted outside to do his business.

As weather alerts blink on my phone – UNSAFE AIR QUALITY, STAY INSIDE – a queasy feeling bubbles in my gut. I’ve felt like this before, like some unknown force is ripping away the beautiful simplicity of everyday life. Some might call my days ordinary: Unload the dishwasher, walk the dog, run errands, visit my 89-year-old mother. But if the pandemic taught me anything, it’s not to take the ordinary for granted.

What did I do then? What do I do now?

It’s simple. I wield a knife.

Admittedly, my weapon is small and dull, a paring knife I received as a wedding gift 27 years ago. But it helps to cut something. Is it weird that cutting carrots helps me work out the fact that the air smells like benzene? That I have real fears about climate change and the world I’ll someday leave for my two young-adult children and, later, their kids?

Chop, cube, dice, and slice. There’s a soothing rhythm to the work, and a satisfaction to tossing symmetrical carrot, celery, and onion slices into my beloved crockpot. Inside the pantry, I find rice and soup stock. Like it’s proffering a gift, the refrigerator offers leftover chicken in need of chopping. A savory scent blankets my tensions as I brown the chicken. I toss a morsel to the dog and ask Google to play Jason Mraz.

As Jason croons his top hit “Lucky,” my husband emerges from his home office and kisses my cheek. The blessing of this moment isn’t lost on me. Outside, a gray haze still darkens the sky, but I’ve got soup for dinner and a great guy to share it with. I turn from the window, my focus on the dog. My husband sniffs the soup with an anticipatory sigh that tells me he might not be able to wait the full six-hour cooking time to sample my creation.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m no gourmet. 

So why, despite my lack of culinary expertise, do I return to the kitchen again and again, especially in times of crisis? 

Cooking calms me. While I’m peeling carrots, I’m peeling off my worries and stripping them down to something manageable. Often, by the time I’ve diced celery, sliced potatoes, and snapped beans, I’ve worked out a myriad of issues, from concerns about my kids to larger anxieties about the state of our war-torn world. Maybe it’s the alone time, the physical act of using my hands, or the soothing scents of spice and soup stock. Whatever the case, cooking soothes my soul.

To me, there’s no better balm than using the gifts of this Earth to heal my heart and nourish those I love.