Chicken noodle soup!!!

Oh, it is so that time of year. You know what I mean--you've got both baseball and football on TV, a few rainy nights and temperatures slowly dipping from the highs of summer. In my house, that means you've got to pull out the old stock pot, because it's soup time. And just to make sure you understand how excited I am, please envision me dancing every time you read "soup time." That's two little wiggles for this paragraph.

I decided to kick off this most excellent season with a chicken soup. I'll share my recipe with you, but keep in mind that I like to use the week's leftover cooked veggies to cut down on waste, so my soup will be different than yours.

OK, here it goes:

4 quarts water

1 large, cut-up chicken, bone in

1/2 peeled onion

3 stalks of celery, cut into coins

3 garlic cloves, peeled

1 cup carrot coins (I had baby carrots, so I used them. Use what you have.)

1 tablespoon sea salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

2 fresh bay leaves

3 tablespoons dried parsley

3 tablespoons dried dill

bowl of leftover veggies (Mine included potatoes, onion, green beans and carrots.)

Bring the water to a boil. Add everything except for the already cooked vegetables. Cover and let cook for an hour and a half. 

Next, remove chicken and skim broth. Don't leave any of those cloves of garlic or large pieces of onion in there! I like the carrots and celery to be soft, I so leave them in. But if you want them to be more firm, remove them now, and replace with freshly cut pieces. 

When chicken is cool enough to be handled, shred the meat, and return it to the broth. Add leftover veggies and simmer for 15 minutes. Serve immediately, because it's soup time! (Insert dance.)