Friday, January 11, 2013

Chicken Soup For The Sick Room.....:-(

Tomorrow is my birthday.  Today, I have spent the day trying to sanitize and take care of a sick family.  The bright side is that my oldest daughter sent me an edible arrangement for for my birthday that had a lot of things I needed to help in the battle of the flu bug.

I have never had an edible arrangement nor have I ever sent one to anyone.  So, at first glance, I thought I saw ice cream on sticks like fudge sickles or something and told Scootard that we had to hurry and eat everything!  We rush the basket into the kitchen took an "ice cream cone" off of the top and discovered that it was chocolate covered pineapple....:-).  Cool...since there were four of them, that would have been a lot of ice cream in one sitting....:-(.   Funny how the picture makes it look like a cupcake..:-).


After spotting the Kale that was used as a garnish, we started to tear the arrangement apart to get to it for the soup I had to make.



I rooted through the fridge to see what else I had that I could through in the pot.  I had some fresh spinach, garlic, onion, chicken breast, cabbage, carrots and herbs. I also found some brown rice to throw in.  Now, it time to cut everything into manageable pieces.......



I had a total of 5 large chicken breast which I decided to split and cut into cubes.  Then I seasoned it with poultry seasoning and a pepper blend that I already had made up in a storage can.




My experience has been that if I add the chicken too soon, it will come out dry and tough even though it is floating in liquid.  So, I tossed all of the veggies in the pot first and brought them to a boil.



Then I decided to quick fry the chicken in some olive oil to seal in the flavor and help keep it moist while cooking.


After the carrots were done, I tossed in the chicken and let it cook until everything was tender and the chicken was thoroughly cooked........


And PRESTO!  Everyone had a bowl or two and I am hopeful that fever that my daughter has developed in the time I was in the kitchen will began to break.....:-(.