Indulgences and celebrations are a wonderful part of the festive season, no matter where you are. It was no different for us in our new home. This, however, saw the family struck down one by one with a cold, or tummy bug, or both. Not a pleasant start to the year! But healing was swift and the bounce back was fast, something I attribute to this soup from Quirky Cooking (http://www.quirkycooking.com.au/2009/07/coconut-lemon-chicken-soup/). This coconut, lemon chicken soup is what I bring out when there is illness around as there is no better way to get all your bug stopping nutrients than putting them in a bowl. Now, my kids are no a fan of this soup, but they do always feel better after having it so maybe make it more fun for them by adding rice vermicelli noodles or letting them add their own choice of greens. 

The combination of turmeric, ginger, garlic, chilli and broth gives your insides a warm and loving hug. As illness can strike quite suddenly I always have my stock frozen for situations like this. There are some differences to the soup I made

• Having come out of Christmas the stock in my freezer was turkey based (I used the turkey carcass after roasting it to make this) 
• I added 400gr of thinly sliced chicken thighs in step 3 of the recipe (http://www.quirkycooking.com.au/2009/07/coconut-lemon-chicken-soup/)
• I like to use twice the amount of ginger and turmeric. Living in Bahrain fresh ginger and turmeric are easily found, which is wonderful if you like to use these ingredients (I make a tea by thinly slicing some ginger and turmeric and pouring hot water over them)
• Half of a chilli is enough and I blitz this in step 1 of the recipe
• The soup does have coriander, but for those that don’t like corriander I can assure you that it’s flavour is not strong
•  I also did not have coconut sugar so used half the amount of raw sugar 
• I thinly slice zucchini that I got from the farmers markets and put the slices in the bottom of the thermoserver and poured the soup on top and left it until everyone was ready for dinner. The zucchini was the perfect texture when ‘cooked’ this way

Sometimes we all need to give our insides some love and nurture, and this is an easy way to do so. You could make this soup and freeze it into portions to have on hand as well. Remember, your freezer can make easy food easier.

Hope you enjoy this loving, easy food.