Sickly Bickly

My mom used to always call us ‘sickly bicklys’ whenever we were under the weather. Unfortunately this weekend (and the good majority of all week) my whole house has been full of sickly bicklys in it’s entirety. For those of you who have never been sick at the same time as you child and spouse- you don’t know how lucky you are. Add on being 7 months pregnant to the mix and you can imagine how delightful it’s been all week. My three year old has an ear infection with a cold, which she passed to my husband and I. I must say chasing her around the house threatening to take stickers off sticker charts and toys away if she did not take her medicine was quite exciting, this of course was after bribing her with ice cream at 8 am, extra stickers, etc. thank goodness this morning was the last that she would need to take the liquid version of a Z-pack. I would love to have gotten to curl up and die (more like collapse on the couch with my sage green fuzzy blanket and watch 8 hours of tv-o’d cooking shows with some nice herbal tea) but being mama means I can’t. So we watched 3 hours of Sesame Street instead.

Yesterday we came dangerously close to running out of tissues, I mean we were about 4 tissues away from having a shortage crisis on our hands. It was time for a grocery trip. So I mustered the troops and we made it through a sneezing, sniffling, slowly shuffling through the aisles shopping trip. I knew that I was running out of options for delivery (which are already quite limited where I live) and frankly nothing was appealing. So let’s face it, mean fall apart when they are sick, they completely shut down so I knew what my guy needed to feel better: Jewish penicillin. And while I was at that, I wanted one of my Jewish food favorites- noodle kugel.
Whenever I make someone else’s recipe I tend to change it to my tastes- which I did with these, however I have made their original recipes and they are fabulous as well!
I made Dave Lieberman’s Noodle Kugel recipe, but instead of raisins I substituted two golden delicious apples peeled and chopped and sautéed them with 2 tablespoons of butter, juice from half a lemon, 1/4 cup granulated sugar, and a healthy dash or two of cinnamon until tender. Then constructed the recipe as depicted.
I love the lightly sweet creamy custard with the slightly crunchy top noodles, it’s delicious and satisfying.

I also made the chicken noodle soup with matzo balls. I love Ina Garten’s recipe except I didn’t have the time or energy to do everything myself, so I made my own recipe which takes some help from the store with chicken stock and rotisserie chicken rather than roasting my own and taking 12 hours to produce my own stock- however if you have that availability, by all means you should use her recipe.

Chicken Noodle Soup & Matzo Balls
Recipe
48 oz Chicken stock (I used Swansons)
3 ribs celery, rinsed and chopped
5 carrots, peeled and chopped
1/2 small yellow onion finely chopped
Salt & ground black pepper
6 oz wide egg noodles
1/2 a rotisserie chicken, skin off and shredded
Matzo balls (I used and prepared the Manischewitz mix)

Instructions
Prepare matzo balls, remove from water and set aside in a bowl.
In a large saucepan heat chicken stock over medium heat, add cut up vegetables and bring to a simmer for appropriately 6-7 minutes. Add egg noodles and cook 10 minutes. Add shredded chicken and matzo balls and heat through.

It may not be a perfect cure for a cold but it definitely is delicious and easy to make.