Month: January 2017

My husband is a man of simple tastes…in food that is.  And while he loves all soups I make, he likes “just a clear soup, with some vegetables, and chicken.”

We’ve been dealing with colds of late.  They just seem to keep hanging on.  So husband made yet another request for “just a clear soup, with some vegetables, and chicken.”

Okay.  I can do that.

Ingredients:
1 whole chicken or a whole bone-in breast and two leg/thigh quarters
2 ribs of celery, diced
3 carrots, diced
1 leek, diced (just the white part)
1/8 tsp. granulated roasted garlic (if you don’t have granulated roasted garlic you can drop a clove in the soup and then take it out before serving…husband doesn’t like a heavy garlic presence)
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup of dried parsley
salt to taste
8 to 12 cups of water
a cup of dried soup noodles, like alphabets or stars

Directions:
Dice all of the vegetables and drop them into a heated soup pot with 2 tablespoons of butter that has melted.  Saute the vegetables for two to three minutes.
Wrap your chicken or chicken parts in cheesecloth (not necessary for flavor…but totally necessary if you don’t want chicken bones in your soup!)
Put your wrapped chicken in the pot.
Pour the water on top, so all the ingredients are covered.
Bring the soup to a boil and then simmer all day (at least 4 hours)

To serve:
Take the chicken out of the pot.  Let cool slightly and pick the meat off the bones.  Discard the bones.
Bring a pot of water to a boil and boil the noodles.
Drain the noodles.
Combine noodles with some of the soup broth and then add to the pot with the rest of the broth and vegetables.
Chop up the cleaned chicken meat and drop into the soup.

There will be a lot of breast meat available for chicken or chicken salad (another husband favorite) or just dump all the chicken into the soup.

Great for a cold day.  Great when you have a cold and don’t feel quite yourself.

Everyone was wondering about a White Christmas.  I am over six decades old and I can remember only handful of Christmases here in New Jersey when there was snow.  Ah.  But January and February and even March.  Snow.  And lots of it.  Yesterday (two weeks after Christmas) was our first snow event.  Just a little.  But enough to crave a pot of soup!

This soup is easy and filling.  So easy you can put it in the crockpot in the morning and go out and play in the snow with your kids, do some craft projects, and watch a movie…and then have a bowl of delicious chill chasing soup to end your day.

This soup is one of my daughter’s recipes that I tweaked just a very little so that husband would like it.  And he did!

Ingredients:
2 (15 ounce) cans of small white beans, rinsed and drained
4 cups of thinly sliced green cabbage (if cabbage is hard to find, or if you don’t like slicing cabbage try using one or two bags of cole slaw from the bagged lettuce area…just the cabbage and carrots…no dressing)
2 large carrots, diced or thinly sliced
2 stalks of celery, diced or thinly sliced
1 clove of garlic (drop in for flavor and then take out before serving)
32 ounces (4 cups) of your favorite chicken or vegetable broth
1 can of stewed tomatoes, mashed and undrained
salt & pepper to taste.

Directions:
You can puree one can of beans and the can of stewed tomatoes in your blender, food processor, or with an immersion blender…if you would like to…not necessary.  Combine all ingredients in a 4 to 5 quart slow cooker and cook 4 to 6 hours on high or 6 to 8 hours on low.  I chose to make my soup on top of the stove.  Works out just as well.

We served this with open faced cheese toasties….

Ingredients.
four to eight slices of bread (depends on the size of your crowd and the size of their appetites)
4 to 8 ounces grated cheddar cheese (grate on the small holes)
enough mayonnaise to make a paste
bread cut into 1 inch squares
(you can add chopped ham or bacon to the cheese mixture)

Directions:
Spread a generous amount of the cheese spread on each bread square and put on a baking tray  Put the tray in a preheated 350 degree (F) oven until cheese melts and is slightly bubbly.

Easy, warm, delicious.  Perfect for a snowy day.