weird...

This is the weirdest cold (?) I can remember. It started with a mild cough Saturday night (after I'd performed, fortunately). That continued Sunday, and I applied tea, ginger root, and steamed milk (not concurrently). Nothing productive -- just the motions of a cough. Sunday night I started to get a mild runny nose (non-productive, i.e. the output didn't have any icky bits or colors). I took a 24-hour Sudafed before bed. Today at times I sounded a little hoarse, though my throat feels fine. Nose and cough action unchanged; took another Sudafed tonight. At no point have I had anything resembling a fever, which I understand I would have if I had either flu.

Isn't the runny nose supposed to come before the cough? I mean, the latter is usually caused by the former, right? I discounted the cough as possibly some sort of environmental reaction (dry air?) when it showed up because it was out of order.

Weird.

(I don't particularly like taking Sudafed, but I also don't like getting up every 3-4 hours at night to take more cough medicine, and I can't take most over-the-counter decongestants. And I figured if there's stuff in there, better to deal with it while it's still in my head, right?)

chicken stoup

Johan used to use "stoup" to refer to something between a soup and a stew. I made a chicken stoup for Shabbat and it was pretty tasty.

Put four chicken thighs in a slow cooker, along with about four sliced carrots, two sliced parsnips, two chopped yellow onions, a generous helping of a spice mixture recommended for chicken (this one had sage, rosemary, thyme, marjoram, paprika, and black pepper), several shakes of minced garlic, and a pint of vegetable broth. Cook on high for four hours. Pull the chicken pieces out, pull off bone, render into bite-sized chunks, add everything but bones back to pot. Add half a bag or so of frozen spinach, stir everything together, and cook for another four hours or so on medium. Serves about four people if that's the meal, maybe more if you serve over rice or with sides.