sick/sopa de picadillo

Sorry no post yesterday, but I was sick, sick, sick. I woke up feeling okay, albeit a tad sluggish. As I passed the mirror on the way out to walk the puppies, I thought to myself, "Oh, you caught some sun yesterday." Out on the goat track I started shivering, however, and then realized my face was not sun-kissed but rather flushed with fever. By the time I brought the dogs back, I was too exhausted to even hang up my coat or their leads. Crawled back into bed and slept another five hours. Then made some tea and got myself comfortable in the TV lounge. I find BBC sitcoms provide me needed solace at times like these, particularly the "middle English" programs, so I put series 1 of "One Foot in the Grave" into the DVD player. And then fell back to sleep for another few hours. This was how the day went. At some point during the night, however, the fever broke, and I feel significantly better this morning. Not a dynamo, but much, much better. :-) Now that I can at least think about food, here's the recipe for sopa de picadillo. This is peasant food at its best, in my opinion, and therefore there is no strict list of ingredients. Start with a basic chicken stock (used canned if you have to, but at least use the low-sodium one). Throw in any chopped vegetables that you have to use up, but don't feel compelled to. Most of the restaurants in our area of Spain serve a very simplistic version of the soap and do not include extra veggies. Add a cup of rice. If you want. Again, I have seen this soup with and without rice. Those who do not include rice often add croutons to finish it off. If you decide to use the rice, boil until just done, and then add diced cooked ham (of any sort) and chopped hardboiled egg, salt and pepper. Squeeze in the juice of a lemon and garnish with either a mint or sage leaf (seen both). I love this soup. It certainly is not fancy, but it is always tasty. If not including vegetables in the soup, serve with a salad and some good crusty bread. hasta manana, mylifeinspain p.s. Oh this is where Big Jim is today: http://www.punjab-info.fsnet.co.uk/taxila.html. Can't wait to visit him!