Chicken Soup

For a man serving up "Chicken Soup" to the masses in a series of comforting runaway best sellers, solving the earth's atmospheric woes is just one item on his list of things to do. Mark Victor Hansen, 48, co-author with Jack Canfield of the "Chicken Soup for the Soul" books, plans to use proceeds of an upcoming book to finance the planting of 18 billion trees to save the earth's atmosphere. In an interview, Hansen also told of plans to "save" the American Red Cross (a portion of the profits from another book will go to that cause)

Chicken soup is just what the doctor orders to fend off or soothe those winter sniffles. But chicken soup needn't be bland and boring - a cliche of carrots, celery and noodles that tastes like nursing-home fare. How about Chicken Mulligatawny, Cock-a-Leekie or Sopa de Tortilla? There's a whole wide world out there, where chicken soup doesn't plop out of cans. Virtually every cuisine in the world has its own version of chicken soup and you've got them all to choose from, including steamy, spicy meal-size mixtures that can provide your whole dinner in a bowl!

Chicken soup is good for what ails you, especially if what ails you is too much fat. Did you know that chicken broth can be "first aid" as a cooking ingredient: a cure for bland and boring low-fat foods? Plain chicken soup, also known as broth or stock - homemade or canned - can be used in place of oil, margarine or butter in oh-so-many dishes. As the base for gravy or cream sauce, it takes the place of grease-soaked pan drippings. Rice, pasta or vegetables cooked in chicken broth need no buttering.

After 15 months on Broadway, Golda's Balcony is on national tour, stopping at the Merriam Theater for eight performances. Valerie Harper, in gray wig and lots of padding, portrays Golda Meir and her commitment to the survival of Israel. William Gibson's play is part biography and part history lesson, sacrificing dramatic interest to the desire to cram a lot of information into 90 minutes. Politically, this play is comfort food, chicken soup for the anxious. Where the play ought to be muscular, it seems sentimental; given the current situation in the Middle East, lines such as "There will be peace when Arabs learn to love their children more than they hate the Jews" should explode off the stage, but Gibson is more interested in the lovable bubbie than the iron-willed leader.

Anyone who recalls the old 4 Chefs - which in its heyday was Northeast Philadelphia's largest catering business - certainly remembers its delicious cream of chicken soup. By the cup or by the bowl, the soup was the talk of the town. 4 Chefs had an illustrious catering career. It opened for business in 1955 at Frankford Avenue and Levick Street, and was the kind of family place where you went for your Little League banquet - and, years later, for your wedding. Over the years, the fame of its chicken soup became so widespread that when one of the owners died, the creamy broth was mentioned in his obituary.

With plummeting winter temperatures comes the irresistible craving for hot soup. The first choice to satisfy - and to comfort and cure cold weather ills - is a steaming bowl of chicken soup. And that is not just in America, but in most of the world. Chicken soup is a folk remedy that has been prescribed by mothers and grandmothers around the globe for at least a thousand years, and recent medical studies have even lent credence to the curative claims. Some call it Jewish penicillin, especially the variation that includes matzoh balls.

In an extraordinary turn of events in an extraordinary week, the following series of e-mail messages was discovered by Brian Dribbitz, a 14-year-old computer whiz who apparently hacked his way into the White House computer system. This is the unedited correspondence downloaded by Brian: Begala@whitehouse: James, had an idea this morning! I think I see a way out of this mess, maybe turn the whole disaster around. how about gettin' the Prez onto Oprah! That lady's flyin' at the moment, probably well on her way to a Nobel Peace Prize or something.

Perhaps I'm "sweating" the "small stuff" too much; possibly I'm being overly "Mars"; or maybe this unrelenting deluge of "chicken soup" has triggered the gag reflex of my soul. Nevertheless, at the risk of being perceived as positively negative, I must speak out. The time has come to cool it with all the inspirational self-improvement books, their sequels, their sequels' sequels, their spin-offs, and their spin-offs' sequels - quite simply, all the repackaged, syrupy, mind-numbingly repetitive tomes by all the Mr. and Mrs. and Dr. and Rev. Feelgoods assuring us either that we're "special" or at least "OK," or, failing that, by reading their books, can begin to be. Enough with the uplift, already.

ABC has canned "Chicken Soup," the Jackie Mason sitcom the network had regarded as a can't-miss hit when the fall season began. The show's eighth and last episode aired last night. The cancellation became official the day of the New York mayoral election. Mason had a bit part in the mayor's race until comments he made about blacks and Jews in a Village Voice interview forced him to quit the campaign of Republican candidate Rudolph Giuliani two months ago. Mason, a comedian and ordained rabbi whose trademark was abrasive ethnic humor, had been Giuliani's honorary campaign chairman.

Tonight, ABC starts the new fall season a week early by introducing two of the most eagerly anticipated shows of the fall television season: Chicken Soup (Channel 6, 9:30 p.m.), starring comedian Jackie Mason, and Life Goes On (Channel 6, 10 p.m.), a drama about a family whose son has Down's syndrome. Chicken Soup has been pegged a sure-fire winner even before it gets on the air. Why? Because it follows the ratings-buster Roseanne (which, by the way, makes its second-season premiere tonight)

The son of television and movie actress Cybill Shepherd this morning was ordered to attend 24 Alcoholics Anonymous meetings as a condition of his sentence, which stems from his January arrest on theft charges at Philadelphia International Airport. During a hearing that took only several minutes, Cyrus "Zack" Shepherd-Oppenheim, 22, was admitted into the state's Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition program (ARD) by Philadelphia Municipal Judge Georganne V. Daher. The program is designed to speed up the legal process for first-time offenders, often those facing drunk driving charges.

He has two places of his own now - Izakaya, a sexy Japanese pub in the Borgata that does 710 covers on an unremarkable Saturday night, and, at 13th and Sansom, a sleek, new-Asian cafe called Sampan. So Michael Schulson, a self-described "white guy" with well-received runs at New York's Buddakan and West Philly's Pod, can lay credible claim to being one of the savvier interpreters of updated Asian fare. (Think slick Korean rice cakes with spicy Italian sausage "Bolognese"; steak and poached egg bahn mi sandwiches bright with pickled shallot; ramen noodle soup with a succulent shred of smoked pork neck.

For a recipe that doesn't have a lot of ingredients, there are many variations when it comes to making matzo balls. Here are several to choose from, including one right from the Manischewitz Matzo Meal box. All are served in chicken soup, preferably homemade, so there's a recipe for that, too. Figure on two matzo balls per person served with soup as a first course. Let's begin with a traditional recipe from 1941's "Jewish Home Beautiful," by Betty D. Greenberg and Althea O. Silverman, published by the Women's League of the United Synagogue of America.

Summer at the Shore is a distant memory, but the beaches and ocean are still there even in the dead of winter. Sure, there's something to be said for Cape May's Victorian holiday hoopla, but if you are a real contrarian you'll find the solitude of the quieter off-season places welcoming and a certain satisfaction in braving the elements. Which is how I came to find myself in Wildwood Crest one blustery weekend, looking for good eats. Part of the fun is finding the year-round dining spots that enjoy feeding the locals who are taking a well-deserved breather from summer season.

Summer at the Shore is a distant memory, but the beaches and ocean are still there even in the dead of winter. Sure, there's something to be said for Cape May's Victorian holiday hoopla, but if you are a real contrarian you'll find the solitude of the quieter off-season places welcoming and a certain satisfaction in braving the elements. Which is how I came to find myself in Wildwood Crest one blustery weekend, looking for good eats. Part of the fun is finding the year-round dining spots that enjoy feeding the locals who are taking a well-deserved breather from summer season.

4 bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts 2 large onions, peeled and quartered 4 carrots, peeled and each cut into 3 or 4 pieces 1 celery root, peeled and quartered 2 parsnips, peeled and each cut into 3 pieces 5 to 6 celery ribs, each cut into 4 pieces 14 cups water (3 quarts plus 2 cups) 2 teaspoons salt Matzo Balls (recipe below) Place chicken, vegetables and salt in a large pot with 14 cups water. Bring to a boil, skimming any foam that rises to the top. Reduce heat and simmer 2 hours.

Deli king Russ Cowan doesn't believe in a cursed address. Otherwise, why take a chance on the 60-seat corner space at 19th and Ranstead Streets that's been a graveyard for failed concepts? (Remember Bootsie's? Ashoka Palace?) Pure corned-beef chutzpah, that's why. "I've taken over some real dumps and fixed them up," boasts Cowan, whose ethereal house-pickled meats (towered high into sandwiches like this reuben) have quadrupled revenues at the original Famous 4th Street Deli in Queen Village since he took it over in 2005.

Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court nomination has generated lots of observations. Not the least of which come from her 2001 Olmos lecture recalling, among other things, that as a Puerto Rican woman she loved pigs feet and beans. While some prefer to offer conjectures on her judicial temperament, I head straight to Allegheny and 2nd to Freddy and Tony's Restaurant. As I see it, experiencing the potential justice's comfort food is part of my civic duty. Freddy and Tony's history goes back to the '70s and it's about as difficult to parse as a legal document.

The rhythms are so familiar, starting with the flurry of phone calls from household to household about who is bringing the bridge chairs, who will lug the large platters, and whether anyone happens to have about a dozen spare serving utensils and a pot large enough to heat up gallons of chicken soup. It's all routine on the days leading up to Passover, and the family seder. It's all encoded into our family DNA, this back-and-forth in the spring of the year when our family joins with Jews around the world as we celebrate the story of Jewish liberation from slavery in Egypt.

My Grandmom Goldberg's Rosh Hashanah matzo balls were virtually inedible. Huge, dense and heavy, they sank into the chicken soup, challenging us to figure out ingenious ways of disposing of them. We grandchildren found our methods. Never mind what they were. As Gertrude Goldberg wore down, as she inevitably did after years of running a mom-and-pop fruit store with my sweet, silent grandfather Joseph, her daughter - my mother - took over the Jewish New Year/Rosh Hashanah holiday meal.