First home-cooked meal of the New Year!

On Wednesday night, Matt starting exhibiting symptoms of the bug that everyone had over the Christmas break, so I decided to make a homemade chicken soup.

The chicken stock base I made and froze a few months ago came about from the carcasses created in this cooking venture. So, without further ado:

Leah's homemade chicken soup*

• 1 L homemade chicken stock


• 1/4 cup tomato sauce


• 1 c dried red kidney beans


• 1 c carrot, sliced


• 2 large mushrooms, sliced


• 2 celery stalks, chopped


• 2 jalapeno peppers, seeded, chopped


• 1/2 ginger root, grated


• 5 cloves garlic, minced


• 4 small yellow onions, chopped


• 2 chicken breasts, boneless, skinless, cubed


• 1 c small pasta shapes, multi-coloured

I started by rehydrating the beans while the previously-frozen stock and tomato sauce were simmering, then got to work chopping the vegetables. The carrots, mushrooms, celery and jalapenos were set aside in a bowl. The ginger was grated right into the stock (I could have used the entire root without throwing off the balance, so I'll probably do that next time). The chopped garlic also got dropped right into the stock (mmm...ginger/garlic smells!). I sautéed/carmellized the onion in a frying pan with olive oil, then spooned those into the stock. The chicken was cooked in the pan that the onions had just been spooned from. Water was simmered in the onion/chicken pan to add to the stock. By then, the beans were ready, so I drained and rinsed those and added them to the soup. While the soup flavours mixed, I boiled the pasta in a separate pot, and added the shapes to the individual bowls of soup, rather than letting them bloat (I hate that!) in the soup pot itself.

* All quantities listed are approximate.