A FEW THOUGHTS ON THE PREVENTION OF H1N1 AND OTHER VARIETIES OF UNINVITED WINTER FUNK

As anyone who knows me well can attest, I tend to confront life's anxieties with a variation of the following mantra: "Well, this sucks. I've got no money/I'm going through a breakup/Bank of America has frozen me out of all my accounts due to a case of mistaken identity/I think this plane is going to crash/my cat just ate another plastic bag/I'm pretty sure I'm incompetent at my job/there's a scary pig-faced flu virus threatening to take over the world, and my health insurance is lousy... WHAT SHOULD I MAKE FOR DINNER?"

Indeed, cooking is the only coping mechanism that seems to work for me most of the time (provided I don't eat all my results in one sitting). It is especially effective for handling health-related worries, as I may not be able to prevent all illness with food but I certainly enjoy distracting myself with the effort.

Case in point: I have been making a lot of soups lately. In particular, I've been making some very tasty vegetable soups. Every time I see a news story about the swine flu, or someone mentions the vaccine, a little chill runs up and down my spine. "But that's just the swine flu!!" I think to myself, breath getting shorter and forehead mangling with stress wrinkles. "What about all the other flus? And colds? The bronchitis I got last year? My winter allergies? The both-ends bug that has been traveling through my apartment building for the last few weeks, confining my neighbors to their bathrooms for days on end? I'm sure to be sick until MAY no matter what I do!!!"

Then I make some soup. If there's a more comforting way to steel one's immune system against an approaching army of killer cooties, I don't know what it is. Sure we can wash our hands 50 times a day, avoid riding public transportation, beg our doctors for the shots, even wear those little paper face masks and scowl at anyone who sneezes. But is any of that FUN, really?

Making soup is fun. Plus it can be cheap and utterly easy. Plus it's a great way to use up old bones and vegetable scraps. Plus it's fun to eat, especially at this time of year when Mother Nature has conspired to provide us with so much yummy, immune-supporting, soup-able produce.

Mushrooms, for example, are readily available at this time of year and are so very good for the immune system. (White button mushrooms are not as nutritious as stronger-flavored varieties , FYI.) Even if you don't like the full-on mushroomness of a cream of mushroom soup, you can still throw a couple of shitakes into whatever other soup you're making to enhance the flavor subtly. Orange squashes and root vegetables, also so well-suited to winter soups, are rich in beta-carotenes... also super-immportant for immunity. Even basic vegetable and bone stocks are chock-full of minerals, ie magnesium and calcium, which you need plenty of during flu season. Soups also provide a great base for heavy-dosing spices and booster foods that support health such as garlic, ginger, chili, turmeric, and even seaweed (you'll never taste it).

Another great thing about homemade soup is that it is far preferable to canned or dried soups both in terms of its potential healthfulness and its economy. Homemade soup, when made properly with fresh ingredients, is blessedly free of the hormone-disrupting BPA, mystery preservatives, "spices" and "natural flavors" (read: MSG), and excess salt commonly found in packaged soups. You can also make huge batches and freeze individual servings for later, which works out to be much cheaper than buying prepackaged soups if you play your cards right.

A few notes on equipment: I find a couple of items to be indispensable for making soups and stews. A hand blender, available for about $25, is perfect for pureeing and much easier to clean than a regular blender (plus you don't have to cool a soup completely to blend it with a hand blender, which you must do if using a regular blender otherwise the steam will expand inside the jar causing the whole thing to explode, scalding and possibly disfiguring you for life). I also tend to use the crock pot a lot, especially for soups involving beans or whole chunks of meat. I highly recommend getting a crock pot for this purpose— you can get a perfectly serviceable one for under $50. When making soups or stews on the stovetop, you want a big heavy-bottomed pot— preferably of the enameled variety as opposed to aluminum which burns more easily and can leach unhealthy stuff into your soup. A Le Creuset pot is particularly great because it lasts a lifetime. And god forbid there's ever an unwelcome intruder in your house, you can whack him with it.

Anyway in spite of all the benefits listed above, my favorite thing about soup is that you can slurp it. Sometimes I make a little game out of slurping. I like to experiment with how loud or bizarre my sounds can get. This consummates the whole soup ritual nicely, like a salute or perhaps an affirmation: "Everything is going to be all right."