I love living in an area of the world that experiences all four seasons...mostly.
I thoroughly enjoy flip flops and sandals but I also take immense pleasure in sitting around bonfires wearing a hoodie and a beanie. And although I am growing less and less in love with winter, there is something so spectacular about a fresh fallen snow blanketing the ground.
Living in the mid-western United States means we have hot and humid summers, mostly colorful falls, occasionally bitter winters, and tumultuous, while pretty, springs.
This meme completely explains things here.
So after this past week's record setting highs in the 90's, I am ready for soup! I am ready for sweaters or hoodies in the morning, t-shirts in the afternoon and back to sweaters and hoodies in the evening. It's glorious.
This week was the inaugural soup of the season. Chicken noodle served with bread bowls from Panera. Heaven.
My guess is that most of us make this close to the same way. I probably NEVER make it the same way twice. Mine is semi-homemade, in all honesty although I have made my own bone broth before. Just sayin'.
Of course you need chicken. This time I had about a pound and I chopped it up.
It looks so disgusting. But man is it good when it's all done!
Then I chop up celery and carrots.
Most would include onions in this array of color but I do NOT like biting into onions and neither do my children so I use onion powder. This way we get some flavor without the biting and the crying and the whining.
Next I throw the chicken, carrots and celery into the crockpot and add some seasoning.
Now here is where things tend to differ. Sometimes I use a bit of chia seeds, a fresh sprig of rosemary or maybe thyme, and a couple of bay leaves. This time I didn't have any rosemary, chia or fresh thyme so...
I toss a couple leaves in and I eyeball a couple teaspoons of thyme.
I love bone broth for the health benefits and I like the flavors of mixing the chicken bone broth with the vegetable broth. I used 1 1/2 boxes of the chicken broth and a whole box of the vegetable broth this time, stirred it all up and set the crockpot to low. I let it simmer all day long.
When I am ready to serve it I cook the noodles in a separate pot of water on the stove. The last few times I made it the family preferred egg noodles instead of the Amish noodles that I used to use. And to be fair, the egg noodles hold up better in left overs.
When the noodles are cooked I rinse them in cold water to stop them from cooking and add them to the crockpot.
As I mentioned this time I had bread bowls. The church I currently serve at has the connection with Panera (or STL Bread Co in my neck of the woods) and every Sunday evening we get the leftovers and use them to give to our church family and the families who attend our child care program. This week the bread bowls were plentiful!
And that's it! It was YUMMY and we have leftovers for a few days!
What soups do you enjoy making? Comment and share your favorites!
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