Serve fresh, hot, homemade chicken soup: It works. Wash a whole fresh chicken, the smallest you can find, and then, with scissors, remove and discard as much skin and fat as possible. Cut it into a top half and a bottom half, then cut off the legs with thighs attached. Rub the inside with your thumbs to dislodge any bits of organs. The more of this stuff you can remove now, the less you will have to skim off later.
Put the chicken in your largest pot with water to cover it completely. Toss in some cut up celery, carrots, and onions only if you have them. Bring to a slow boil for five minutes and, during that time, use a big spoon to skim off any white or gray froth that rises up. Then cook covered, just below the boiling point, for at least two hours, preferably four or six. Add bouillon cubes, during the last half hour, until it is just barely salty enough; you can always add more salt later but you cannot take it back out.
Cool and strain into pint storage containers that you can freeze at home. Use these as ice packs until they thaw, then heat and serve the soup. Try making pasta with this, using just barely enough soup topped off with water and adding a little more water at the end only if needed, so that the pasta is ready without having to drain it. Some sea cooks also swear by split pea soup—preferably yellow rather than green for the obvious reason—to settle a queasy stomach. For crew who are vegetarian, substitute boxed vegetable stock from the supermarket.