February Favorites: Winter Weeknight Meal

I love cooking.  And I love soup.  I love cooking soup!  And after a shitty, long-ass day at work, there is nothing better than straight up comfort chow.

BUT.  Its not always practical to cook some amazing, totally from scratch soup on a weeknight...we don't get home until around 5:30...we wouldn't be eating until 9 pm!  What follows is my version of sorta homemade chicken noodle soup that satisfies all the cravings with only about an hour of cooking...hello normal 6:30 dinner time!!  (And it tastes and smells WAY better than stuff out of a can.  Trust me.)

(Katie!  This is the soup we talked about this weekend.  !!  xoxo)




Sorta Homemade Chicken and Noodles

1 Rotisserie chicken from the grocery store.  (I've also used a rotisserie turkey breast-YUM- left over home roasted chicken also works, of course, if you are one of THOSE people.)
1-2 tbs. olive oil
1 Onion, diced
1 1/2 tsp. salt
2-3 carrots, chopped (I like bigger, rustic pieces of carrot but that's just me)
2-3 celery stalks, chopped  (Opposite on this- I like little, tender pieces of celery)
2 tsp. basil
black pepper to taste
lots of chicken broth (8 cups or so?  I usually use (2) 32 oz. boxes of store bought broth)
6 oz. or so of dry egg noodles


 First, rip that chicken apart!  Its good for getting out any end of day frustrations.  Collect bit sized chicken pieces in a bowl and set aside.  (Some days, to speed things up, I'll do this on the weekend or at lunch and just refrigerate the chicken until I need it.  Time saver!!)
Heat the olive oil up in a heavy bottomed soup pot, medium to medium-high heat.  Add the onion and salt to the pan and saute for 5 minutes or so.  Add the carrots, celery, basil and black pepper.  Put a lid on it, turn the heat down to low and cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Remove the lid, add the chicken broth and the chicken pieces.  Bring it up to a simmer and cook until the veggies are almost tender (10 min or so?).
Bring the soup up to a boil and add the noodles.  Cook until done. 

Devour with crusty french bread and salad.  Cozy up with a book or in front of a movie.  No judging.

Chase with something chocolaty.

Our little family of 3 usually gets dinner and lunch out of this recipe.  Score!

Digging Myself Out

I did it.  Somehow, I made it through last week's Insane Work Craziness and came out the other side relatively unscathed.  There might be some delayed decompressing but right now I feel pretty fucking amazing.  I accomplished a lot, had many meetings, threw one enormous event (about 600 attendees) and am still almost not crazy.  You know what I mean.

Here are a few of the things that are helping me dig myself out of the stress-trench I've been trapped in the last 10 days or so.  I'm stoked that I have time to read books, play with my kid, cook, and surf the net again.  Life is...well...better.

1.  Donkeys.  OMG how I love looking at pictures of sweet little donkeys.  I've always loved them- they have such personality!  My grandma used to love to tell this story about a little Family Circus moment I had when I was young:  She and I were driving in the Kansas farm-country when we saw a sweet pasture of little gray donkeys.  "Those donkeys remind me of Jesus!" I declared.  Obviously, I was very young and smack in the middle of Catholic Ed. but even now...Donkeys kind of remind me of Jesus.  But in a good way.




2.  Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is a fucking fantastic book.  I loved Seth Grahame-Smith's Pride Predjudice and Zombies, as well.  Just totally awesome.
I especially love how he weaves the source material with the monsters so seamlessly...I'm simultaneously really interested in story while laughing my ever loving ass off.  Leave it to me to discuss Jesus, Abraham Lincoln and Vampires in the same post.

3.  This recipe for Black Bean Burgers with Mango Salsa.  We've made it once a week for probably the last month.  And none of us are sick of it yet.  Otto absolutely loves it.  Its wonderful "we wish it was summer" food.  (And no, it is not yet summer here.  Cold, windy, high temps in the 30's and 40's.  To paraphrase Steve Zissou, "Sonofabitch I'm sick of this weather." )

But seriously, you should make this dish because it is awesome.  The only thing we do differently from the recipe is we cook the burgers on our big ol' non-stick griddle instead of baking them- we like the crustiness the griddle provides and it seemed like baking them just kind of dried them out and made them fall apart a little bit.

4.  Hangin' with my homies aka my family.  They are awesome.  Otto is super into cutting pretty much anything with his little green scissors these days so I put him to work on some coupons.  Heh.   And yes, that ad for tampons features a busty lady in a sports bra.