The Soup Quest: Chicken Noodle Soup

I am on a quest to find soups that my husband will eat and enjoy. His theory on soup is that since it has a substantial amount of liquid it is pointless. He’d rather have a glass of water and something to chew. AND he doesn’t like cooked veggies, which is the base of most soups I make. The only soup he will admit to enjoying is Chicken Noodle. So, I'm starting with that. I’ve asked him what veggies he’ll eat in it and he replied, “corn, and maybe carrots, but only if they’re not mushy.” With that guideline, away I go!

Ingredients:

3 chicken thighs, bone-in

½ tsp dried basil

1 box chicken broth (or 4 cups)

8 cups of water, or enough to fill

4-6 bouillon cubes

1-2 large carrot(s) (1 cup), shredded (decreases mushiness factor if it’s shredded)

3 stalks celery, diced (1 cup)

½ tsp celery seeds

½ cup onion, diced (or 1 Tbsp dried minced onion)

2 tsp dried minced garlic

Salt and pepper to taste

½ package spaghetti noodles

Directions:

Put chicken thighs in a 6qt crock pot sprinkle with basil, and cook on high 2-3 hours or until done. Remove thighs from crock pot, let them cool a bit (don’t burn yourself), debone and shred the chicken. Return the meat to the pot.

Add the remaining ingredients, except for the spaghetti, and cook on high for 2 hours or on low for 4-8. Essentially the veggies need to soften and the flavors need to meld.

½ hour before serving, take the spaghetti and break it into thirds. Add to the pot and cook on high for ½ hour or until the noodles are done.

This makes a very dense soup, if you like yours with a higher ratio of broth, only add ¼ package of spaghetti.

I didn't end up putting in corn, but that could easily be added if desired.

Taking Breaks from the Keyboard

I have a desk job. Not a horribly thrilling desk job, though I hope to change that soon to a slightly more thrilling desk job. Almost every night I go home exhausted, I’m sure mostly from the lack of sleep of being a new mother. The rest of that exhaustion generally stems from sitting on my bum all day staring at a computer screen.

It seems so counter intuitive that a sedentary job would tire you out, but there you have it. I get the tight shoulders, achy neck, tired eyes, etc, then there’s the mental gymnastics (even if they’re just somersaults on slow days) and stress, the inter-office drama and stress… Well, I’m sure I’m not the only one that is exhausted after a day of sitting at a desk.

Today I’m feeling pretty good, and I have a feeling it’s in part because I made a point to get up and walk laps around the interior of the building (it’s cold outside) twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon. Getting my blood flowing makes me feel better, and if I get odd looks from my coworkers, oh well. If they were really interested in what I was up to they’d ask me.

I also have been stretching my arms and back today. I picked up a couple of good moves from my Zumba class (that I only attended three times, though I totally loved those three times). The standing cat and cow stretch. Essentially, you’re doing the cat and cow but standing, leaning over with your hands on your knees. Such a great move, and you don’t have to look like a complete idiot on your hands and knees next to your desk. You just look a little silly.

My back and neck already feel better from the stretching, and I feel more energized from pacing the halls. If I got really ambitious I suppose I could do laps on the stairs, but let’s not get crazy.

Below are a couple of articles from MSN Health on dealing with the desk job.

My Desk Job is Making Me Fat

Workouts for Desk Jockeys

Happy Friday!

Crock Pot Basics

I use my crock pot a lot. Why? Because I can. And because it means that I don’t have to stay in the kitchen and watch stuff cook when I’d rather be playing with my son.

Crock pots can cook almost anything that you’d cook in an oven in 8-10 hours on low. And lots of stuff that you’d cook on the stove as well. Below are some very basic “recipes.”

Rice:

1 part rice

2 parts water

• Put rice and water in pot, stir
• Cook on high for 2-3 hours
• Done, bam!

Beans:

Dried beans of your choice

• Rinse beans in a colander, and make sure to pick them over for stones, wrinkly-icky looking beans, etc.
• Put beans either in your crock pot or another large bowl, cover with water two to three inches beyond the top of the bean pile
• Let beans sit 8 hours or overnight in a cool location (the fridge is always good)
• Drain and rinse again in the colander
• Put beans in crock pot, cover with water two to three inches beyond the top of the beans (sounds familiar, no?)
• Cook on low for 8 hours or until beans are tender (like they are from the can)
• Drain and rinse one more time

Chicken:

Chicken parts, or a whole chicken provided it will fit in the pot with the lid closed

A little water

Spices

• Put chicken (frozen or thawed) in pot
• Add a little water, just a tablespoon or two
• Sprinkle with spices
• Cook on low 8 hours (you may need 10 if a whole, frozen chicken) or high 4 hours (again, add an hour or so if a whole, frozen chicken)

That should get you started!

Sprouting Onions

Ever have this happen? You reach into your cupboard expecting to pull out an onion, and instead you pull out a shriveled, papery, wrinkled thing with pale green shoots coming out the top. That happened to me tonight.

Instead of shrugging it off and tossing it all away, I’m excited to have blanched onion shoots! As in the gardening term for blanched, not the cooking. Very tender and mellower than the onion itself, I’ll use them diced in chicken noodle soup and/or shepherd’s pie since my husband isn’t such an onion fan. (Honestly, I’m not a huge onion fan either, but they give a great flavor to crock pot recipes.) I have a bunch of batch cooking to do for lunches, so this will be a welcome addition.

I’m trying to be less wasteful in the kitchen, and even though I wasn’t able to get to the onion in time, it makes me happy that I was able to make use of the sprouts. And really, the rest of the wrinkly mess didn’t go to waste – it went into the compost which will eventually grow more onions or other vegetables. Had it not been so past its prime, it would have gone into the broth bag – my freezer bag of veggie bits and pieces that gets turned into broth.

So, the next time an onion sprouts on you, just remember you now have Blanched Onion Shoots. People probably would pay big money for that type of thing, it sounds so fancy.

Holding it Together With Tears and Laughter

I was talking with a coworker today about crying. She has two teens and laughed about how she was a complete psycho until each child hit about a year old. She cried about everything – mostly from lack of sleep.

Then we started talking about the ridiculous times we cried right after we’d just had our kids. Like how a well-meaning friend got hamburger grease all over my clean baby bottles. How we sobbed about magazine articles. Or commercials with sad music. I had to stop reading anything but home improvement magazines and romance novels. And how our poor husbands, who tried so hard to understand what we were going through, just didn’t get it – especially how we’ll often feel so much better after.

Lately I get weepy when I’m frustrated. And nothing makes me more frustrated than being exhausted. Nothing works right, including my body. Today I cracked my forehead on the car door because I was looking down at my feet in the snow, thinking about getting my boots out of the closet, and not thinking about the door that I was opening straight into my head. (I’m afraid to check and see how colorful my forehead is right now.) I’ll laugh about this later – I’m a total sucker for physical comedy – but right now I’m just annoyed. And feeling silly for being annoyed.

My mother and her sisters are criers. They cry at everything. The happier the occasion, the louder they are. When I got married, it was like Albert from The Birdcage was in the audience. (Seriously, watch that movie.) As I listened to my aunts weep and sniffle with joy, it made me feel so blessed to know that they couldn’t physically hold in all of their love for me. My mom cries on my birthday every year as she remembers the day I was born. Mom or her sisters would try to explain to my non-mommy self that crying can be such a good thing. I didn’t get it then.

I get it now. When each of them first held Max they started laughing and crying at the same time – which is exactly what I did when the doctor put him on my chest right after he was born. Even as I cry out of frustration that I can’t do it all, I think of all of the joy that Max has brought me and my heart overflows with love, and my tears change in a heartbeat. And I feel better after.

So, once the swelling on my forehead goes down, I might just have a good cry and let those emotions overflow. And maybe not tomorrow, but probably next week I’ll laugh about how I was so overtired that I managed to open the car door right into my head. My husband is already laughing about it - after he made sure I was ok, of course.

Naptime Filing

They say that when your child naps, you should nap too. I’ve attempted this, and sometimes it works. Max will sleep, I will sleep, and we’ll knock out a good hour or two. Other times, not so much. Max will sleep, but lightly, and he’ll open his eyes every 15 minutes to make sure I’m still watching him. And if I’m not there… much fussing and no napping, resulting in a very tired little boy, and a frustrated mommy.

Yesterday morning was one of those naps. But that was ok, because I had a project and I wasn’t too tired. I put him to sleep in the living room, grabbed my boxes of filing, and spread out on the floor. Boxes, you say? Yes, boxes of filing. Two boxes, down from three from when I started. (scary, right?)

I have a confession: I haven’t done any filing for almost three years. Yeah, I know. I kept out important papers that I would need for taxes, but everything else (and then some) got tossed in a box from the copy room at work, and when that one filled I just grabbed another. And another.

I started doing this when we moved back to my hometown. My husband and I moved in with my parents and we had no room for a filing system, and the “throw it in the box” method was born. And by the time we moved out a year and change later, we were busy with the new house. And then… well, it was just kind of scary to look at so I ignored the filing boxes, except to toss some more on top.

I had to take the cats in for checkups at a new vet and tried to find their records and it took me over half an hour. I admitted to myself that there was a problem. So, few weeks ago I decided to suck it up and just do it. A journey of a thousand pieces of paper starts with just one. It has taken weeks of here and there pecking away, but after yesterday’s two-hour marathon, I’m done! Well, virtually done. I have less than two inches of papers to file, and everything fits into one, nice and neat box with folders, labels, and tabs. Mostly neat.

Honestly, I used to be such an organized and tidy person. The move totally screwed that up – living out of boxes in someone else’s space is not a conducive environment for organization. Then we bought a fixer-upper and I didn’t want to unpack in a room that still has yet to be finished. Then I got pregnant.

Then I got over it. The house is going to take a while, I might as well unpack. Nesting urges helped a lot! So, ever so slowly the stacks of boxes are going away, and a home is emerging. Mostly during naptimes.

Finding Middle Ground

This feels good. I’ve been contemplating creating a blog for a while now, and with the New Year in sight I might as well start now.

As you can read in my “about me,” I’m a new mother to a beautiful baby boy – a beautifully active baby boy. Talk about keeping me on my toes, and he’s not even very mobile yet! I’d love to stay at home with him but that’s just not an option.

Since I’ve had my boy, I’ve learned even more about compromise. Mostly compromising with myself.

I cloth diaper – about half of the time

I cook homemade meals – half of the week, and eat leftovers or cereal the rest

I make my son’s food – about ¾ of it, and purchase the rest

I garden – but I don’t plant everything I want to

I (we) renovate our home – slowly so we can also have play time

At first I was so frustrated that I wasn’t able to do it all – and then I got over it. I make deals with myself. I tell myself, I want all of the laundry done today. Then I alter it to, I will try to do all of the laundry today, but if it doesn’t get finished until tomorrow, that’s ok. I still get frustrated, who doesn’t? I’m working on finding my middle ground between doing it all and not doing it at all, which is really all we can ask of ourselves.

Welcome to Mommy’s Middle Ground!