Souper Bass

Here are things that suck:

The Green Bay Packers
Hangnails
People who tYpE lYKKK d!s <3333
Mononucleosis

I'm just one viral disease away from my goal weight!

Unfortunately for one of my good friends here with me in Spain, she is currently being stomped on by the latter of these things: the dreaded mono.

That poor girl left her apartment for the first time in a week this Sunday. Talk about terrible timing.

Another of my close friends from home had mono a few summers ago and thought it would be funny to eat an entire twice-baked potato from a rib joint near our houses and paid the price for it when she finally digested it a week later. With this in mind, I decided to whip up some chicken soup for my friend here in Spain to hopefully speed the healing process.

Let it be stated here that chicken soup has been scientifically proven to help bolster the immune system.

At first I wasn't going to blog about it because chicken soup is kind of boring, but honestly it's fantastic comfort food and it's so easy to make that once you've done it you'll be over Campbell's for good. My mom usually adds dried sage and a bay leaf or two as the base flavors but you can leave them out and it'll still be good.

Also if you want to cheat, use a pre-cooked rotisserie chicken. I prefer the organic ones from Costco but any will do.

If and when you add noodles, know that they will soak up a majority of the liquid if it sits in the fridge overnight so keep that in mind.

Ingredients:
1 box chicken broth
2-3 cups of water
2 cups cooked chicken breast, chopped into bite-sized pieces
3 large sprigs of fresh dill
1/2 medium onion, minced
3 stalks celery, diced
1 large carrot, peeled and sliced into rounds
3 tbs. butter
Cracked pepper, salt to taste

1. In a large saucepan, saute the onion and celery in the butter over medium heat until the onion is translucent.

2. While the onion and celery are cooking, pour the chicken broth and water into a large soup pot, add the dill (and 1/2 tsp. sage, 2 bay leaves if you're using them) and the sliced carrots and simmer over medium-low heat.

3. When the celery and onion are cooked, add them to the soup pot and continue to simmer for about 20 minutes. Add the cooked, chopped chicken and simmer for about 10 minutes more, or until the carrot rounds are soft but not mushy. Serve immediately with cracked pepper and salt.

To add noodles: cook 1 or 2 servings of wide egg noodles separately until al dente (still firm) and drain well. Add to the pot just before taking it off the heat so they don't go all soft and fall apart like French soccer players.

This will keep, tightly covered, for about 3 days in the fridge and indefinitely in the freezer.