Damn glad I know how to cook, right around now



Normally, I don't care for soup. When I'm sick, however, I crave my homemade chicken soup (and little else). So, since I've taken the day off for feeling like crap, I thought I'd put the chicken I roasted on the weekend to good use. Also, as an exercise in showing the world how anal I am with my food, I'm showing you, in braces, all of the items with which I was extra finicky about what I did.

Stock:

• back and wings of a whole, roasted chicken {it was roasted on a bed of garlic, onion and sweet potato, had an olive oil and salt rub and finally had lemon juice poured over it}, plus the bones from the breast and leg meat


• {filtered} water, enough to submerge the chicken carcass in


• bouillon cube, optional {I used one Harvest Sun Organic Herbal Bouillon Cube this time}


• saffron, optional

Soup Ingredients:

• Chicken leg meat, plus whatever gets picked off of the carcass once the stock has been made and set aside


• one whole onion, diced {I would've preferred a yellow onion to the Spanish onion I had on-hand}


• one head of {organic} garlic, diced


• about one head of {organic} celery, chopped


• about 1/2 lb. of {organic} carrots, chopped


• one package {organic — whatever that means in this case} mushrooms, cleaned and sliced


• one whole {organic} tomato, chopped


• {sea} salt and {fresh cracked black} pepper, to taste

Absent 'cause I'm an idiot — but which will be present once Matt brings it home on his way from work:

• ginger root, peeled and grated