Soup’s On

There is nothing quite so cozy and delicious as a good homemade chicken soup, yet somehow – confession! – I have never actually made one straight-from-scratch. Over the holidays, however, the husband’s mum brought us a batch of her best, and I fell in love. Not only does it have the snuggled-up-on-the-sofa feeling of your mum taking care of you when you’re sick, but it’s the kind of filling that doesn’t turn it into a side dish. Perfect!

This is the kind of recipe that is pretty easy to make fully organic – I went fully so aside from the coconut milk, because I couldn’t find an organic version. Doing so makes this hearty little number as healthy as possible. Now that I’m eating meat again, I am thrilled to be shopping once more at my friendly neighbourhood organic meat market, The Healthy Butcher.

Patti’s Homemade Chicken Soup

• 1 roasting chicken
• 2-3 containers chicken broth
• 1 bag of carrots
• 2 cooking onions
• 1 bag of celery
• 1 large handful parsley
• Liquid Knorr if desired (I skipped it)
• Jamaican Coq spice to taste (if desired, I didn’t have any so I skipped it)
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1/4-1 can coconut milk (I went with a light variety but you can use full fat if desired!)
• 1/2 bag acini di pepe

Wash the chicken inside and out, then put it in a big heavy pot – I had to borrow my mother-in-law’s as I somehow have made it this far in life without a huge soup pot. (Aha, perfect use for the holiday gift card to William-Sonoma that’s burning a hole in my pocket!) Add between two and three containers of chicken broth – enough to cover the chicken. (Note that mine wouldn’t cover my chicken completely – ack! – but I just went to the top of the pot and it was fine.) Throw in one peeled onion, one scrubbed carrot, and one stalk of celery and you’re ready to run. Put the whole thing on high ’til it comes to a boil, then simmer for 45-60 minutes or so ’til the chicken is cooked.

While you’re waiting around for this to happen, you have a few things to prep for the next phase. Scrub the rest of your bag of carrots, chop off the ends, and cut in two – no need to peel! Clean and chop up your celery along with the leaves, then dice it nice and small. Additionally, clean and finely chop one onion and a big handful of parsley.

Back to the stock! Once the chicken is cooked, remove it to a plate to cool. (Tip: use tongs for this – stick one tong inside where the bird’s guts used to be, and the other on top. So easy!) Remove the onion, carrot, and celery and discard. Add in your chopped carrots and get the stock back to a light boil, then add your freshly chopped celery, onion, and parsley. At the same time, boil water and throw in the acini di pepe for seven or eight minutes, then rinse.

After 15-20 minutes, your carrots will be fully cooked – test them with a fork if you’re not sure – at which point you should remove them and mash them a bit. By now, your chicken should be cooled off, so take this opportunity to cut it into bite-sized pieces. Add both the chopped chicken and mashed carrots back into the stock.

Taste the broth – see how much salt and pepper need to be added, and consider adding liquid Knorr if it doesn’t taste chicken-y enough (I skipped this step as I couldn’t find the stuff) and Coq if you want some spice. Add your coconut milk now – anywhere between a quarter of a can to an entire one, dependent on how you like it – and your acini di pepe.

Note that this recipe comes along best if you have two devoted assistants. The wee one slept in his Baby Bjorn Air chair in the kitchen for the couple of hours that it took to make this batch, and the pup kept a close eye on his new little master. So much adorableness in one room made for a perfect soup kitchen!

Going Granola

So pretty much the world’s greatest gift for couples with a brand new babe who’s taken over their lives is food. The incredible Jen is thus the queen of gift giving, as we were home from the hospital for less than 24 hours when she arrived with bags – we’re talking five reusable grocery store bags, and those babies are not small! – of snacks and meals for the very, very grateful new parents. We’ve been dining and nibbling on the goodies ever since, and now that I’ve sampled all of it, I have to confirm that my favourite of all the deliverables was her homemade granola bars. So nutritious, so filling, and so yummy! Of course, given the tastiness factor, I had to ask for the recipe, knowing full well I likely wouldn’t be able to make it any time soon.

The babe hits his three week birthday tomorrow, and I’ve done no baking in the first weeks of his life – between feeding the voracious little hunger machine, doing endless laundry, and figuring out which cries mean what, it’s been a hectic time! (Though I must be clear – I’m not doing this on my own by any means. My super amazing husband is every bit as engrossed by this process as I am and I couldn’t ask for a better partner in this wee venture!) In any case, other than a few batches of holiday-coloured rice krispie squares (don’t mock!), there have been no treats crafted by these hands in some time. Thus, when the babe crashed for his morning nap today, I suspected it was time to hop back on the bandwagon and make these yummy granola treats my first foray back into deliciousness!

Jen But Never Jenn’s Homemade Granola Bars

• 2.5C rolled oats (edit: the second time I made this, I used the Quaker large flake variety – perfect!)
• 1/2C brown sugar
• 1/3C flax seeds (she recommends ground ones, but I didn’t have any in the house – edit: 15 seconds in the blender is perfect!)
• 1t cinnamon
• 1/2C white flour
• 1/2C whole wheat flour
• 3/4t sea salt
• 1C raisins (can also make part of this dried cranberries or other chopped dried fruit – edit: remember to soak these in hot water for five minutes as well to plump them up)
• 1/4C pumpkin seeds (she uses sunflower seeds, but I again didn’t have any in the house – she says hemp seeds are also good)
• 1/4C unsweetened coconut
• 1/2C chopped raw almonds (I used a combination of almonds, cashews, and walnuts – edit: Jen says to soak ‘em first for supreme healthiness)
• 1/3C semi-sweet chocolate chips (Jen uses the organic ones as they’re smaller, but again – I didn’t have any in the house so I used regular this time)
• 1/2C honey
• 1 egg, beaten (see my replacement note below)
• 1/2C sunflower oil (Jen says you can substitute applesauce for this if you want something healthier with more fibre, or you can go with canola oil or even peanut oil for a peanut buttery flavour)
• 2t vanilla extract

I just wrote out the entire baking instruction and, since I’d been running around taking care of the babes for a while, I’d inadvertently been logged out and they disappeared! In any case… preheat the oven to 350F and butter up a 9×13″ pan.

Mix together everything from oats to salt (I just realized I’d inadvertently dropped the salt, but it made no difference in the taste, so whatevs), then toss in the tasty stuff from raisins to chocolate chips. Make a little well in the middle of the dry ingredients and pour in the wet stuff. I realized, however, at the final moment that my eggs expired on December 21. Oopsie. I substituted 2T arrowroot powder and a little extra honey and it was just fine.

At this point, the granola goes into the buttered pan and gets pressed down maniacally with a buttered spatula, making it as firm as humanly possible so it bakes solidly. Toss it in the oven for 25-30 minutes, and keep an eye on it during the last minutes to ensure the edges don’t get too dark, which implies the bars are going to be dry. The tiny one began his demands for food during the baking stage, however, so the husband was in charge of taking the bars out. Jen had warned me to cut them after they were out for five minutes as they could otherwise become too hard to cut, but even half an hour later, they were still okay, but I wouldn’t have left them much longer!

Going granola for 2010? Yum!