Chicken Noodle Soup

Lemon and Garlic Chicken with Parmesan Vegetables–How and Why to Roast a Whole Chicken at Home this Week!

/ More Time at the Table / 2 Comments

While chicken often tops the list of dinner ingredients in the U.S., (“Winner, winner, chicken dinner!” or “A chicken in every pot!”) it doesn’t take much to figure out those meals today are often based on ubiquitous, tasteless boneless chicken breasts instead of the flavorful cage-free chickens Herbert Hoover supposedly wanted for us. The American obsession with huge chicken breasts (hmph) is a sad one and continues for many reasons–one being it’s easy to not remember where meat comes from if you only have a slab of it and no fat, bones, joints, tendons, guts, or skin. I’ve had more than one adult student who, faced with putting a whole chicken (already cut up, by the way) in a skillet to brown for a tasty fricassée, admitted they had never before handled a chicken with bones. I, on the other hand, almost never buy boneless breasts, though I’ll admit I adore boneless thighs for everything from sandwiches to chili. There are several reasons–the main one being the taste factor–but here’s the critical other one. Because we demand outrageous and overwhelming numbers of inexpensive low-fat, protein rich boneless breasts (just try to buy bone-in breasts in today’s market) compared to other parts, chickens today are often–though not always– raised in incredibly poor and horrific conditions by inhumanely treated workers. How’d that come to be???

Continue reading →

Ina Fridays — Main Courses — Chicken Noodle Soup

/ More Time at the Table / 12 Comments

IMG_6672

On the first Friday of each month, I blog Ina Garten recipes with a fine group of writer-cooks.  Scroll down to the bottom for links to the other posts and come back the next two months for November desserts and December appetizers.

I’m thrilled to eat Chicken Noodle Soup nearly anytime.  Ask Dave.  I’ll eat it even if he makes it and Dave doesn’t usually make soup.  How about you?  Is there anything better when you’re hungry or don’t feel well?  It’s a whole meal in a bowl and I often add extra vegetables to add taste, nutrition, and fiber.  I don’t mind eating it a couple days in a row or for lunches for several.  I’m ecstatic if I look in the freezer and see a container waiting for me when I’m wondering what’s for dinner.  Does chicken soup really increase health?  I don’t know for sure, but I know I’m happier and feel better when I’ve had a big bowl.

The 12th-century Jewish physician, Maimonides, started the chicken soup-as-medicine trend when, in his book, On the Cause of Symptoms, he recommended the broth of hens and other fowl to “neutralize body constitution.” According to Maimonides, boiled chicken soup also played a role in curing leprosy and asthma, and–as a Jewish grandmother might put it–“putting some meat on your bones.”

In Jewish Food: The World at Table, Matthew Goodman reports on a 1978 study conducted at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach that confirmed at least part of Maimonides’ prescription: “chicken soup proved more effective than simple hot or cold water in clearing congested nasal passages.”

courtesy My Jewish Learning

I made this big pot of goodness when our kids and grandkids were coming down to visit earlier this week after the sudden loss of our sweet golden retriever, Miss Gab. (Click for the sad tale.)  This comforting potion was justly the first real meal cooked in our new kitchen, which is almost done now.  (Phewee –I include a few more photos interspersed throughout the post.) Continue reading →

38 Power Foods, Week 8 — Carrots — On the Loose

/ More Time at the Table / 10 Comments

I have no idea what you’d do without carrots.  I think I just couldn’t cook without them.
I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about, “Oh, I love carrots,” but there isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t buy them. I can’t imagine my crisper without carrots.  But I don’t think I ever thought much about them before.

Two carrot stories come to mind…after this gorgeous salad:

Moroccan Carrot Salad

 We were camping in Texas once where we spent long days tubing on the Guadalupe River.  (Folks floated by with six-packs tied to their inner tubes.)  It was so hot the ice was a constant puddle in the coolers and we worried about our food.  (Why didn’t I sell ice in south Texas?  Once again I had chosen the wrong profession.)   Insert bad language; there were six of us to feed three times a day for a week.  One poor woman stopped to say only one thing to me, “Even my carrots rotted today.”   I knew how she felt; I was down to cabbage, potatoes, and onions, though I always have cans in the back of the van.  If your carrots betray you, you’re in trouble.  She was heartbroken and I understood why.

And the other story….

Once, when I’d been on Weight Watchers forever, Dave said,

I liked you a lot better when carrots were no points.

You see, carrots, along with all the other vegetables in the world, were FREE–point-wise, that is.  Until one year, somebody smartened up and figured out they had a little sugar.  Wowee-zowee; they were then 1 point.  Broke my heart.  (Since then, a WW friend reports carrots are once more free.  I’m breathing a bit easier though I simply use myfitnesspal.com to track my weight and exercise now.  Love that site and there’s an app for it.)

Took this at Pike Place Market.  Gorgeous sentiment, “Carrots on-the-loose.”

 
Carrots make nearly everything taste better. Without them, how could you make soup?  If you skip them and just add the onions and celery to flavor the broth, it’s just not the same.  What about stew?  Roast chicken with vegetables?  Salad?  Veggie tray?  Pot Roast? Carrot cake? 

I make carrot cake cupcakes at Easter; recipe here.  It’s for the sheetcake, but works just the same.

 How about…

Alyce’s  Egg Salad?

or…

Split Pea Soup for One?

 

Pasta out of the Frig and Pantry??
Lentil Soup?

  or..

Could you bring potato salad?
Make your own Chicken Noodle Soup from scratch?

Chicken Noodle Soup in Under an Hour (above)  has morphed into a soup with a 30 minute finishing time for cookbook I’m working on…It works. Just wait and see how.

Unless you have spent a lot of time thinking about it, you’ve just realized the cooking world

would be a very different place without carrots. (One note: if you like them in spaghetti sauce or marinara, be careful; too many and you’ve ruined it.  I sometimes like just a bit of carrot in my marinara.)   Naturally, they’re good for you.  Didn’t your mother tell you to eat your carrots so you could see better?  A deficiency of vitamin A can cause night blindness, according to several sources, but it doesn’t appear carrots truly help you see better. 
Carrots are an excellent source of vitamin A, a good source of potassium, and contain vitamins C & B6, copper, folic acid,thiamine and magnesium. The high level of beta-carotene is very important and gives carrots their distinctive orange colour.
Carrots also contain, in smaller amounts, essential oils, carbohydrates and nitrogenous composites. They are well-known for their sweetening, antianaemic, healing, diuretic, remineralizing and sedative properties.
In order to assimilate the greatest quantity of the nutrients present in carrots, it is important to chew them well – they are the exception to the rule – they are more nutritious cooked than raw.

Did I mention they keep a good long while?   How long?

2-3 weeks fresh in the refrigerator
12-18 months blanched and stored well-wrapped in the freezer

~Stilltasty.com

Read a poem about a pea who wants to be a carrot here.
National Carrot Day?  February 3,  naturally. 





~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 38 Power Foods is a group effort!   Stop by these other blogs and see what they’re cooking each week as we team up to bring you some of the healthiest cooking available.

Ansh – SpiceRoots.com  
Jill – SaucyCooks 

Sarah – Everything in the Kitchen Sink
Anabanana – adobodownunder.blogspot.com
.
As we go along, I’m guessing we’ll get some other writers involved.  If you’re interested in joining the gang writing each week, get in touch with Mireya from My Healthy Eating Habits:  Mireya@MyHealthyEatingHabits.com
 

two-dog kitchen and around the ‘hood

Our eastern view the morning after the big rain storm.  Roads washed out and a bridge collapsed.

Next afternoon, more rain while our house was being painted.  I just can’t capture the rainbows in Colorado, but here’s my try.  This is just off to the southeast from the mesa up on the west side of Colorado Springs (up above I-25 if you’ve ever driven through north to south in the state.)

My temp office to write the book.  I love being alone to write.  We moved out the bedroom furniture to give me space.

One of two soups I worked on this week:  Alyce’s Spicy Cucumber-Feta photographed in my tiny herb garden.

Sing a new song; chew your carrots up, honey,

Alyce

Chicken and Noodles FAST! or I Finally Got my Snow Day

/ More Time at the Table / Leave a comment
How quickly can you say Chicken and Noodles?
A not-so-freaky Spring storm hit St. Paul Wednesday, snarling traffic and causing 250 accidents in the metro area.  Which makes me wonder why we all think we  MUST get to work no matter the weather.  Even when the chances of our becoming harmed in the process rise dramatically.   I wonder how much difference it made once folks braved the weather, the roads, and the other drivers.  Especially as the other drivers included guys like one whose semi jack-knived on the interstate and stopped traffic for a good long while in the ice and snow.   At the end of the day, a friend stopped by to drop off a bedside table, mirror and lamp.  Luckily I had shoveled (and shoveled.)  She said it took her and hour and a half to get to work and then none of her appointments showed anyway.
Male downy woodpecker eats fast.  The female eats here, too.  Not at the same time.
When we weren’t “protected” by steel, glass and plastic (fueled by flammable liquids), did we decide we simply had to venture out in the elements when God had definitely decreed a day indoors by the fire making a pot of soup and reading?  Did our great-grandparents decide to walk to town in the midst of blizzards?  (“I’m sure I can get there; I need to mail that letter today so it gets there by next month.”)
Birds were smart.  They went from the tree to the feeder and back.  Period.
I can’t see it.  Life’s just too precious and yet I’d be called a wimp if I called in snow.  I watched Dave call a cab, drag his suitcase through the mire and head off to the airport.  My darling got on a plane in that mess, albeit hours later.  I guess he enjoyed the time in the Minneapolis airport; at least it’s the nicest (in my opinion) one in the country.   The dogs and I stayed snug.
Temp furniture bought for a song.  Ours will arrive in two months after the snow melts.  Argh.
 The south side of my house faces a fairly busy street (the price of being close to shops and restaurants), so I was able to watch the slip and slide show all day long.  These people couldn’t see and they were driving.  It got no better as time wore on.  No plow came and the realization that the plow was waiting for the snow to stop (he knew more than I did as I shoved a couple of times) let me know I was staying home.  Good thing, too, because when the plow did arrive, it laid in a pile of icebergs several feet high at the bottom of my driveway.  Someone then parked in front of it, thinking there was a space on the street.  You know how parking in the snow is.  I could walk out if I felt like it, which I didn’t, but my car was going nowhere.  Lenten study at church would have to wait ’til next week.
To shorten the story, it took  more than 24 hours and a young man with two shovels and an ice pick an hour and a half of work (after I shoveled three hours/can you say sore?) to free up access to the street.  Lesson learned:  don’t park your car in your drive or garage before a snow storm.  You won’t be able to GET OUT afterward. 
Luckily, I had something hot to keep me company.  I had to cook it, though.
Cook’s Note:  This is not a long afternoon’s chicken noodle soup; it cooks in about 30 minutes.  Still, it’s lovely, warming and you didn’t have to spend the afternoon in from the snow to get it done.
Easy and Fast Chicken and Noodles serves 2-3; easily doubles
1T each olive oil and butter
3 pieces of chicken (1 breast, 1 leg and 1 thigh)
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
2 stalks celery,  chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced (optional)
2 large carrots, peeled and cut up
1/3 c fresh parsley, chopped
1/2 tsp each thyme and rosemary (you could sub sage or poultry seasoning)
3 cups chicken stock or water
6 oz frozen egg noodles
1/2 c frozen peas 
  1. In a 3-4 qt heavy saucepan or small stockpot, heat oil and butter over medium-high heat and add chicken that you’ve salted and peppered well.  Add vegetables, herbs, and spices.  Let brown well 5-7 minutes; turn, stir, and let brown another 5 minutes.
  2. Add stock.  Bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer, covered, over low heat about 30 minutes.
  3. Meantime, follow package directions and cook 6 oz frozen egg noodles in a separate pot for 20 minutes, adding frozen peas last 3 minutes.
  4. Strain noodles and peas; add to chicken mixture.  Taste and adjust seasonings.  Serve hot.  For a more chicken and dumplings feel, add 1/2 cup milk to the pot when you add the noodles and peas. 

I’m reading…  Books on Minnesota (duh), The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem by Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan, Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion by Sara Miles, Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, A Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese by Brad Kessler.  I just bought Home Cheese Making: Recipes for 75 Delicious Cheeses by Rikki Carroll and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon but I haven’t started them.  I’ve promised my Colorado Springs book club I’d read THE CURIOUS INCIDENT…by next Wed.   Time to get going.  By the way, Sara Miles book is life-changing and GOAT SONG is one of the most lovingly-written books of the decade.  Where did he learn to write like that?

On Minnesota Public Radio this morning:  We would need $21 million to feed the hungry in Minnesota; that would be for 8 billion meals. 

Sing a new song,
Alyce