Cupcakes

Every week I get the chance to try amazing food from the seemingly endless list of wonderful restaurants in New York City. I am so spoiled, I forget how wonderful it is to have home made goods. This past weekend was full of home made goods and reminded me that pleasures in food are wide and varied and can include something as simple as one of your best friend's own cupcake mastery.

I was feeling a bit (actually more like drowning) under the weather last week and I had lost my taste and appetite for everything. I was so concerned with not coughing up a lung that food was an after thought. By the weekend though, I was regaining my sense of self and decided to make some home made chicken soup. It is one of my favorite soups to make, because all the fresh vegetables taste so refreshing and healthy.

I spent several hours mastering my soup on Saturday, first boiling the yummy organic chicken I got from Trader Joe's to not only cook my chicken, but make my own broth...then chopping all the vegetables to add in: red onion, carrot, celery, cabbage, white beans, serrano peppers and white button mushrooms. The smell of the chicken cooking, slightly crept in my nostrils...hurray, my sense of smell (and thereby hunger) had returned!

A few short hours of simmering all these lovely ingredients together and voila, chicken soup. By the end, I was so excited to eat it, it didn't matter what it tasted like. However, it was confirmed by Paul that it did actually have a delicious flavor (either that or he was seriously stroking my ego).

I don't know how that chicken did it, but somehow it made me feel better. Maybe it was just placebo effect, maybe it was the supportive and loving company...but whatever it was, I was grateful to have the energy to go celebrate with my good friend Sarah for her birthday. Not to mention the cookie cake that awaited...

Hanging out with friends is like a natural antibiotic as well and I was feeling better by the minute. Taste buds reawakened by chicken soup were salivating to satisfy my sweet tooth. Just about to dive into her cookie cake and our good friend Peggy arrives with her home made cupcakes! Can you say cookie cake who? Not just any cupcakes, somehow she makes this frosting that just melts in your mouth. Pumpkin flavored to celebrate fall no less... If she wasn't such a talented designer, I might ask her to open an in-home baking business and hire me as chief taste tester.

A week that started out dismally, peaked with even more wallowing in self-sickness-pity, and ending on a note of comfort food surrounded by my friends was the best roller-coaster week ever. I don't really want to go through the sickness part again, but give me the rest any day and I would be happy.