Chicken Soup with Rice

This morning Chas woke up from bed and he told me that today was a good day to make chicken soup with rice. “Like Pierre!” (almost!) Not for lunch, not for dinner, but for breakfast. In late June. In a house that has no air conditioning, in the beginning of a high pressure heat system.

So to celebrate the end of the cool mornings (at least for a spell), I let Chas motor with the soup menu.

We have a proper chicken soup recipe (thank you mom–and subsequently mamaw) but on hand we also have a richly-illustrated, inspiring copy of Family Meals (Chas seems to like the pictures inside because they “are like it is in our house” –sort of minus the fact that this ain’t no vineyard) and made the Mediterranean style chicken soup: chicken soup made special and somehow summery by adding a tablespoon of fresh chopped dill out of the garden and the juice of half a lemon. It was out of this world delicious!

Chas, subjective critic, was cautious at first about the dill. But he totally caved and polished the bowl off and ate a second helping, besides.

Ford had seconds, too.
As did I.
And the cats had a bowl, too.

Which goes to show you that Sendak is, as usual, right:

“I told you once, I told you twice,
All seasons of the year are nice
For sipping chicken soup with rice.”