*My* Chicken Soup : A Party in the Heart !

I was a vegetarian for a number of years and yes, there were times when I wanted something so badly that I felt as if I were torturing myself with deprivation. "Like what," you might ask? Like a sandwich made of canned fish, or corned beef on March 17th, or turkey on Thanksgiving, or the taste of Wiener Schnitzel made with pounded veal cutlets.
Since I am not a Sabbath keeper, I do not spend the Friday day hours preparing for a special meal for Friday evening until Saturday at sunset. When I do make chicken, I generally boil it with a collection of seasonings; smoked paprika, dill, chervil, tarragon, thyme, and savory. I also chop up vegetables such as carrots, parsnip, turnip, rutabaga, onion, and celery. But today was especially noteworthy because I made vegetable broth at the same time.
Vegetable broth is the by-product of boiled down peeled vegetable skins, tips, bottoms, and leaves that are just about ready to turn. Or they might be the leaves of perfectly healthy celery that I don't feel like adding to a salad. These bits and pieces are put into sealed plastic bags and tossed into the back of the fridge. After about 6 months, the bags are opened and the vegetables savings are boiled with water. I boil them for the same amount of time I use to boil the chicken in the pot on the other burner.
The broth is almost always darker than the chicken soup. I generally have a number of leafy green Chinese vegetables that darken the broth. I usually have about six cups of stock and I add it to the chicken soup with each serving. The soup is usually made with an inordinately fat chicken and I make sure that all of the parts are intact (neck, liver, gizzard). When the soup cools it forms a yellow waxy layer of fat on the surface. It reminds me of candle wax that has dripped from the white Sabbath candle that can be easily scooped off the surface where it lands. It is a sign of pride to have lots of fat to remove. It means the chicken was well fed and it means that you care enough with love to remove the fat.
I also separate everything; the soup, the broth, the vegetables, the chicken. I reconstitute the components of a meal with measurements. I believe the meal is curative. It transports me through time and space to when my maternal grandmother would go through the motions of preparing the meal. She used tiny, thin egg noodles and stored her food in Pyrex that had lids. I use Tupperware.
No one is around to watch me prepare the food. No one asks questions. Some will agree to take a taste or a bowl of my offering. No one asks the recipe (thank G*d, since there is none). It never comes out the same way twice. And it always makes a party in the heart.