The Flu Sucks

Title says it all. A couple of days ago my throat felt scratchy, and I decided that I was NOT about to get sick and willed it away. That didn't work so well. Baby girl and I spent the day on the couch yesterday, where I had the pleasure of watching the entire first season of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Good times.

I was jonesing for a pot of chicken noodle soup. My husband, God love him, is better at preparing breakfast foods and boxed items. (Me? I set boxed food on fire. I'll save that story for another time.) Short of calling my mom and begging her to come make me some soup (and she would have, but then she would have caught the flu, and it would have settled in her lungs and she'd have to go to the hospital and I would feel horrible). Thus, I knew I had to do it myself.

So I got up this morning at 0-dark-30 with the kids and started working on the soup. (Scroll to the bottom for the recipe. Sorry, no pics.)

Now I'm floating on a "I've eaten my body weight in chicken noodle soup and Naproxen" high. (Naproxen is a pain killer / fever reducer. These body aches are making me very sad.)

I did stop by and check on my seedlings. Watching them almost makes me forget I'm sick. Almost.

A few days ago, I started my broccoli seeds. 

I used a pencil eraser to poke holes in the dirt:

Broccoli seeds are very wee.

I put one seed in each hole, because thinning them makes me sad.

A day and a half later, I found this little guy peeking out at me. 

Then today, amid the sniffles and the sneezing, I found these! Hello, baby broccoli. Welcome to the world. I will eat you one day.

One of my basil plants just turned 3 weeks old. It's working on its 4th set of true leaves.

3 week old swiss chard. 

Without further ado, here's my personal recipe for chicken noodle soup:

Ingredients

1 whole chicken

1 onion

5 cloves of garlic

4-5 stalks celery

4-5 carrots (or two big handfuls baby carrots)

bunch of fresh parsley

fresh rosemary

olive oil

salt and pepper

red pepper flakes

chicken stock (either stuff you made, canned / boxed. You can also use water. I used 5 cans.)

1 box of noodles (I used spaghetti, because it's all I had.)

Method of Preparation

Get out a stock pot or soup pot or whatever good size pot you have. Take your olive oil and drizzle it in the bottom, going around 3 or so times. Turn the heat on around medium high.

While your pot is heating up, dice your onion into bite sized pieces. Mince your garlic. (Bonus points for putting the onion skins and garlic peels in a bucket for your compost pile.)

Toss the diced onion and minced garlic into the pot and saute it. While it's cooking, roughly chop your carrots and celery. Toss that in the pot too.

Cook all of it together until it smells awesome and has some color. You're not going for burnt here - you want it GBD - golden brown and delicious.

When it's done, time to deglaze your pot. Mmmm. Deglazing is just taking the cooked on bits at the bottom of the pot, and making them not stuck to the bottom anymore. Don't worry, they're delicious. To deglaze your pot, just pour your chicken broth / water in the pot. You can even use white wine. (Everything is better with wine, I say.) Like I said above, I used about 5 cans of chicken broth. Well no, I DID use 5 cans of chicken broth. Anyway.

Now it is time for the chicken. If you're like me, you pulled your chicken out of the freezer the night before you wanted to use it. Being the food safe person you are, you attempted to defrost it in the fridge. When you pulled it out of the fridge to make soup out of it, it was still as hard as a rock, and you couldn't get the heart and kidneys out of the middle. Oh well. At least get the plastic wrapper off of the chicken. Now toss (or gently place, so you don't wind up wearing your soup base) the chicken in the pot.

Add more chicken broth / stock / water if necessary, depending on the size of the bird. You want the chicken covered. Add a couple stalks of fresh rosemary and red pepper flakes. Cover it with a lid, turn it down to low, and wait a few hours.

When the chicken is cooked, it'll start falling apart in the pot. This is a good time to remove the chicken, very carefully. You'll need 2 forks and an arsenal of swear words. You will inevitably burn yourself. Consider yourself warned.

Add your noodles. I broke a bunch of spaghetti into 3rds and used that. 

Remove the skin, and bones. Basically, just go to town on that bad boy removing any and all meat, hacking it into somewhat bite sized pieces along the way. Add it back to the broth. Stir it all up and season to taste with salt and pepper. Add a handful of parsley. Pat yourself gently on the back, because you have body aches and doing it harder would hurt more.

Nom nom nom.