If you are seeing a picture of tom kha gai then it is safe to assume that I feel like crap. 

Sometimes you just don't need a recipe to know what your body craves. This is one of those days, because I have a bad cold. One of those I don't want to do anything at all kind of colds.

I have been battling it for 5 days. It started typically enough with a scratchy throat. By the next day I had a stuffy nose, but no fever. In fact if it weren't for the stuffy nose I would have said I felt just fine. I had just about convinced myself that it was not a cold at all, just a mild allergy flair up.

But, alas sometime in the night these sniffles moved into my chest and sat down with a great heavy thud! My chest is so congested that it actually feels as if a great big bear is sitting on it while sticking a long feather down my throat. Tickling away for his own amusement. The tickle leads to a cough, the cough leads to hack and the hack brings up some of the nastiest stuff you'd ever want to see.

I used to think that the only thing for a cold was hot tea and toast. But I have learned there is another sort of relief and I have come to swear by it. If you live in Los Angeles long enough, you find that you shed your old skin and develop all sorts of new habits. The simple, comforting and spicy Thai soup known as Tom kha gai or Tom kha kai is one of those skins you develop. One of those adopted experiences that become completely your own. So now whenever I have a cold, it's this soup and this soup alone that makes me feel better.

God Bless the thriving Thai community in Los Angeles.

It's Christmas cookie time. A time that makes everyone smile, right? But you know what? I am not a big fan of making cookies. So fussy and repetitive. Especially when decoration is required. Sticky icing used to glue on sparkly candies that under non-holiday circumstances I would never eat. Which is why I like these Cinnamon Snap Cookies. Simple to make but so full of holiday spirit.

In fact I was invited to a blogger Christmas cookie exchange. Full of bloggers I love and bloggers I know are great cooks. But I showed up empty handed. No cookies from me. I had intended to make these cookies. But I didn't. I felt a little bad. But I was busy. Busy reading blogs...

I read all kinds of blogs, and it takes up all kinds of time. Time I could (better??) spend wrapping ribbons around cookies, right? Instead I read blogs with great photos. I read blogs that make me laugh. I read blogs from people I like, and I read the train wreck blogs too. In fact those are some of my favorites!

Ghost Chilis are (supposedly, arguably, possibly) the hottest pepper in the world. In 2007 The Guiness Book of World Records deemed them 401.5 times hotter than Tabasco sauce. Since then, the Naga Viper Pepper, Infinity Chilli, and the Trinidad Scorpion Butch T Pepper have been bred to (supposedly, arguably, possibly) surpass the ghost pepper on the Scoville scale, which (supposedly, arguably, possibly) measures the heat level in chili peppers.

Not that the semantics matter when you taste one– because they are hot. Damn hot. Too hot for me (supposedly, arguably, possibly). But that doesn't mean I can't find a way to cook with them. Take this Flatiron Steak Sandwich With Cucumber, Ginger Relish & Ghost Chili Aioli. I took a great sandwich recipe from Tom Colicchio and adapted to include this Ghost Chili Aioli.

I have been wanting to do something with Ghost Chilis for about a year. You see Marx Foods sent me some dried Ghost Chili samples and they have sat in my pantry this past year zinging me with the promise of a heat so hot as to be (supposedly, arguably, possibly) inedible.

Inedible. Heat so Hot. Those are fightin' words in my house. I'll eat anything, and I'll scar my tongue just to prove it if I have too.