It was time to try making chicken soup again. I like to buy the $5 rotisserie chickens on Fridays at Giant, because they make a fast and healthy meal that I don’t need to put much effort into. Of course, every time I buy one, after we eat the tasty meaty bits, I’m left with a chicken carcass wasting away in its plastic box in the fridge. I feel guilty throwing it out knowing I can make something out of it, so I tried soup again this weekend. And this time I took pictures!

First I cut off the leafy end of three celery stalks and chopped them up. I also coarsely chopped half an onion and one big carrot. I tossed in two bay leaves and a huge teaspoon of thyme, and my pot looked like this:

Then I picked over the chicken, getting as much of the meat off as I could. I threw out some of the skin because it adds so much fat to the soup, but I kept a little bit for flavor. Let me tell you, ripping apart a chicken with your bare hands is slimy and sort of gross, and very difficult to do when you’re being circled by three cats who think it’s their dinner. Anyway, next I added 8-ish cups of water (to almost fill the pot) and my chicken bones. I added a tablespoon of powdered chicken bouillon and a tablespoon of liquid chicken bouillon (Bovril, the good stuff), and some black pepper. Things got a little ugly.

That boiled for an hour or so, and I used that time to dice two stalks of celery, two carrots, and a quarter onion so I could add them to the soup after it was done. I strained the whole mess into a huge mixing bowl, threw out the bones and stuff, and put the soup back into the pot, nearly swooning from the delicious chickeny aroma. I put it back on to boil, adding the veggies and some alphabet noodles. Here’s the final result:

It ended up cloudier than last time, but I don’t care. It was delicious, and I think I’ve got it down now and won’t need to call Mom next time to remind me what I’m supposed to be doing. My man even loved it, despite the presence of “mushy vegetables”, and I’ve gotten the green light to make it anytime.

And let’s call this Thing 19, shall we? I still feel funny using dinner for Thing-a-Day but I did make it. I’ll try to be a little more forgiving of myself and accept cooking as creativity.