Sure-Cure Chicken Soup

            Today was one of those days when you wake up five minutes after you need to leave to go someplace.  You red-eye your way through some coffee, pulling on jeans and a sweat shirt, slipping on your shoes in spite of the laces, and scurrying out the door.  Not that you are going to avoid being late.  Rather, you will be even later, due to the “help” you get at the local one-stop store from employees who do not know the difference between a two foot bungee cord and a good honest rope.  The isle label actually includes the word “rope” yet failed.  Finally, my daughter Candace and I realize that a home improvement store is what we need.  Oh yeah.  Not only did Home Depot carry the item that we wasted a half hour hunting, the employees, having inquired carefully, smartly attended the purpose of our venture and freely armed us with a ball of good old fashioned twine, the stuff which actually has been used for securing cargo to the top of your vehicle since Hannibal crossed the Alps on Elephants.  We arrived a full ninety minutes late for picking up Candace’s new bed.  Fortunately, the next thing I know, I am driving thirty-five miles an hour across town with a queen size four poster bed tied to the roof of our van.  Thank God; judging by the knots in the twine, I knew our helper on that end had probably never been a boy scout; I executed a few of my husband’s Navy square knots and nothing slipped.

            Michigan it is getting cold and damp.  My husband has some fall virus that requires him to drink a lot of tea and eat some chicken soup.  Yesterday I bought a rotisserie chicken form the local store.  I honestly believe that my husband magically gets better any time he eats rotisserie lemon chicken.  Normally we do not eat all the meat on the first day, leaving me enough to make a healthy pot of soup the next day.  As I was very busy today, but the imperial invalid in the bedroom was clamoring for his nurse, I left him in bed and let the chicken carcass simmer (sans meat), promising to give him something special in a little while.  (Other than another cup of sage tea.)

Sure-Cure Chicken Soup

            First cut most of the meat from the carcass and set aside in the refrigerator.  Put the carcass in a pot of boiling water.  Add two bay leaves, and two chicken bouillon cubes.  Let simmer with a lid on the pot for about an hour.  (Simmer-to-cook on low heat)  Strain the liquid from the carcass, pulling off any extra meat that you might find and putting it in the pot with the clean broth.  Add the meat that you set aside earlier.  Cup up two carrots, two stalks of celery, and half a green pepper and one half cup of rice; add it to the pot.  (I happened to have some asparagus and cut up five stalks and added it to my soup.  Add whatever vegetables you have handy) Let the soup cook until the veggies are fully cooked, that is, soft.  In a frying pan add some olive oil, diced onion and diced garlic; sauté until clear.  Add paprika, salt and one half cup of flour to the onions and garlic and mix together, letting brown.  When the flour is lightly browned add contents of the pan to the soup pot. add six shakes of soy sauce.  Throw in one cinnamon stick for about five minutes and then take it out.  Add one half teaspoon of tarragon, one eighth teaspoon chili pepper and any salt and pepper you might like.  Wake up your patient and make him sit at the kitchen table, as the cooking smells from the kitchen will help him taste the soup if his taste-buds are off.

PS:  If you live in Europe, watch out with the celery.  I swear the Slovenian celery is ten times as potent as what grows here in Hudsonville!