Chicken Soup For Your Soul

Very recently the two year anniversary of my nanna's death occured and after a post by my cousin on her blog I have been thinking about her more than ever recently.

So after contemplating what to do for dinner tonight, I decided to make Nanna's old family recipe for chicken soup.

Anyone in our family who spent their years growing up with nanna, spending their school holidays with nanna, or visiting nanna for a weekend during winter when we grew older, you could always smell nanna's chicken soup as you drove into the driveway. Nanna was famous for her soup (though everything she made was always delicious), but this soup in particular holds a special memory in my heart. These smells are the smells of my childhood.

Nanna used to tell me how she and my mother would be in the kitchen together making this soup when my mum was young. Then, as I grew up, I used to help nanna make the soup - talking about life, love and all of the wonderful family stories and memories that I loved to hear about. Cooking with Nanna were some of the greatest times of my life.

Now, making this soup is a ritual between my mother and I. It isn't that mum and I didn't cook together when I was young. Indeed, there are some wonderful photos and memories of cooking as a child with mum. I owe all of my culinary skills to both my nanna and my mum. But now that Nanna is gone, it is a special time that I get to spend with just mum and I. All of those discussions and chats that I used to have with nanna over bubbling soup I now have with mum.

Today's soup making session left me with a thought. I hope if I am ever lucky enough to have a daughter that someday she gets to have that bonding experience over food with my mum that I had with Nanna, and I hope that I get to have the same as well.

Nanna, it's times like these that I miss you so much it hurts, there is no-one who can ever take your place. And Mum, you are the greatest mum in the world - I could not and would not want another mum but you. I love you both!!!