I will never forget the first time my first baby got sick. He wasn't big-time sick, just a little bug, but my hired-loving-grandmother of a housekeeper, Connie, was accusatory. Had I taken him out in public? Had I exposed him to questionable people? Before I could even answer, she emphatically insisted that this one-year-old needed chicken soup.

Relieved to escape the moral questioning, I flew to the cupboard and started rifling the soup cans. Oh, please, let there be chicken soup. Before I could begin to survey the labels, she interrupted. "No! I need a chicken!"

I was really disoriented then. I had eaten chicken soup from a can all my life. Especially as a youngster when I was sick. But I spun around to the freezer, and lo and behold, there was a whole chicken - hard as a rock. She took it and thumped it down on the counter, turning away to hang up her coat.

I was dismissed.

The symptoms displayed by my son at this point in his illness was that he slept. Connie took a big pillow, like one you might lean against on the floor to watch television. She made a little nest of it nearby, and laid him down so she could watch over him. She then spent the next three hours thawing the chicken, boiling it whole and straining the broth - it was quite a production.

While it was cooling, she took some in a cup, roused him and holding him, spooned in about two teaspoons worth. "There," she murmured, and returned him to his nest.

I stood there stupefied. All that? For that? I knew better than to say anything. And I was grateful.

Connie has come when my baby was just 6 weeks old, and I was a fumbling idiot. She was going to fill in for two weeks until I found someone. Every week or so, one of us would mention that I was still looking. Little did I know that she would stay eleven years. We kept that joke "I'm still looking" until the end. She retired when my baby was an inch taller than she was. But she left specific instructions in case he should become ill.

I hadn't thought about the famous chicken soup episode in years. But then I read where McDonald's has agreed to pay $7 million dollars to the American Heart Association for a public education campaign about the dangers of trans fats, an all-around unsavory substance produced from the "partially hydrogenated" oils used in their fryers - the very same ones which bring life to their French fries and Chicken McNuggets, straight from the deep freeze. These are popular items in Happy Meals, enthusiastically consumed by legions of little kids.

Several years ago, McDonald's announced to great public acclaim that they were voluntarily replacing their cooking oils, and would do so within months. Only they didn't. Instead, they quietly announced that their plans were delayed. Now, over two years later, a litigation settlement also has McDonald's agreeing to keep everyone informed on its progress.

According to McDonald's spokesperson Walt Riker, "We're still working and testing. We're going to keep trying until we get it right." Reportedly, McDonald's has already gotten it right in both Australia and Denmark, so I'm not exactly sure what they're looking for.

Given that the health of kids is involved, I wish them better luck then I had in finding a replacement. Then again, I wasn't really looking.

I'm Moira Gunn. This is Five Minutes.

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