Alternatives to chicken soup

The other day I was planning on making turkey burgers for dinner, but Paul started not feeling well. Normally when he gets sick I whip up some Mexican tortilla soup—because although this makes me feel bad in some undefinable way, I don't like traditional chicken noodle soup. Especially when one doesn't have the time to truly do it right, by starting off with an entire bird dropped into boiling water. But this time we'd just had chilaquiles the night before, and I don't, or can't, cook food from the same nationality two nights in a row. (I know, it's insane. I grew up with my mother and father cooking very internationally but I can't imagine they actually switched it up every single night.)

So this time I made Thai chicken curry noodle soup, and he claimed it did make him feel better. This soup and the tortilla soup both cover some good anti-cold bases—loads of chicken broth and shreds of chicken, lime juice for a hit of vitamin C, and garlic for whatever garlic does. But the non-sick person can enjoy it too and make it as spicy as they want with the addition of drops of sriracha sauce or bits of jalapeño. If you are like me, and the thought of making regular chicken soup makes you start walking slowly and mopily like a sad Charlie Brown, I highly recommend one of these when a loved one is coming down with something. I don't have recipes to pass on because it's very much a process of tossing stuff in the pot and tasting as I go along, but there are tons of online recipes.

On another note, I'd been looking forward to turkey burgers so much that I got a craving for my most guilty pleasure of all. So this is what I had for lunch that day.

Paul is going to laugh when he sees this post because I didn't tell him about it. Yes, it's a Big Mac. During my pregnancy I couldn't stand just about any source of protein or iron, and then discovered that the basically hidden meat in a Big Mac was acceptable. And I, like the guy in "Super-Size Me", got addicted.

What guilty food pleasures do you have? And do you cook other alternatives to chicken soup when someone gets a cold?