Well, Snarky isn't sick. YET. But The Mister is. Woefully so: fever, sinus pressure, just the general nastiness + malaise that tends to strike 'round this time of year.

Snarky fixed him up with a round of Nyquil (he was up all night, which means that Snarky was up all night too ) and set some frozen chicken thighs to thaw in the fridge for some Jewish penicillin tonight.

Actually, there is a type of chicken soup DarkityMa used to make when members of the DarkityFam were under the weather. She had a special clay pot with a sort of funnel in the middle - it looked like a bundt cake pan crossed with a clay donut - that she used to steam up the chicken. The pot sat on top of another pot of boiling water, and the funnel directed the steam into the donut and cooked the chicken she had placed in the bottom of the clay pot. The soup formed from the steam and random cooking juices released by the chicken and aromatics.

Snarky suspects that Chinese mothers and Jewish mothers have a lot in common. Her proof is still pretty flimsy, but this still might be something worth investigating futher:

- both provide food, usually in the form of soup, as the panacea of choice (there's the aforementioned chicken soup, plus all manner of sweet soups for sore throats and mucus issues... Snarky disctinctly remembers a sweet soup her mother made with white wood fungus that was supposed to help her blood somehow, and she also recalls a berry/astragalus root tincture/soup she took roughly once a month for her wimmin issues)

- both are violently addicted to mah jong

- both consider Chinese Food a perfectly good holiday meal alternative/standby

- both are highly skilled in guilt-ninjitsu, case in point:

"How many Jewish/Chinese mothers does it take to change a light bulb?"

(heavily sighing) "Oh, don't mind me. I don't want to be a bother. I'll just sit in the dark."