matzo ball soup notes

I've been making matzo ball soup by making the matzo balls, putting them aside, and then putting them into chicken broth with leftover cooked chicken, cooked carrots, celery, and spices.

Notes: simmer the carrots in chicken broth, in a covered saucepan, for an hour or so. A bit of ginger powder seemed to improve this. (You can cook carrots by microwaving them, but the broth adds flavor. If I wanted to make glazed carrots, I might use the microwave.)

Cutting up a few scallions and adding the green bits, and maybe some of the white bits, to the bowls of soup after serving is a good idea. Yesterday, the white parts of the scallions went into the broth, because onion is good in chicken soup.

Spices: powdered ginger, powdered shallot (Penzey's), garlic powder (I used the Penzey's "toasted granulated garlic." Throwing in a piece of ginger root also works, but fish it out of the soup before serving.

The chicken broth was a mix of "Pacific Foods" brand boxed broth -- this is the one that tastes good and contains neither dairy nor mushroom powder -- and chicken-flavored "Better than Boullion." If dairy is a problem, don't get the "premium" better than boullion, because it contains whey. The one we want is the "organic" chicken soup base.

[cattitude can't have mushrooms, and adrian_turtle has to avoid dairy. I'm almost always cooking for one if not both of them as well as myself.]

Paxlovid interactions

So I can find it again: this government of Quebec webpage (in English) has two lists of drug interactions for Paxlovid. The first, which I've seen elsewhere, are "do not take Paxlovid if you are taking any of these other drugs." The second, longer, list is other things that may interact with Paxlovid. In some cases, taking Paxlovid increases or decreases the effective dose of the other medication.

https://vaccin-covid.canada.ca/info/paxlovid-en.html and scroll down to "The following may also interact with PAXLOVID"

ETA: And the US FDA EUA includes a different list of drug interaction warnings: https://www.fda.gov/media/155050/download (via siderea) The UK has yet a third list. All of this seems to add up to "talk to your physician about whetber to take this, and about dosage of your other medications."

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More about Paxlovid, not closely related but I already have one post today to keep track of this stuff:

The company that makes the drug did a study of whether it would prevent infection in people who live in the same household as someone with covid, and it doesn't seem to. (The study was of 2957 adults, who tested negative and did not have covid symptoms.) "Doesn't seem to" in this case means that there was a difference, but it's not statistically significant.

Also, something I hadn't known is that all the Paxlovid studies so far are in unvaccinated people. I got that part from a blog post by Derek Lowe. That might be relevant for the vast majority of my readers, who are vaccinated and have useful antibodies because it, though it won't affect my own decision-making.