Recipe: Chicken Soup for Sickly Souls

Sickly souls like me! Between bouts of sniffling and shivering today, I made myself some chicken soup. Here's my favorite recipe.

You'll need:
3 boneless chicken thighs (cage-free organic if you want to go to heaven) cut into small bites
1 quart chicken or vegetable stock
2 quarts water
1 tsp. olive oil
½ large white onion, minced
3 stalks celery, minced
2 large carrots, chopped, or sliced into thin medallions
1 cup brown rice (or use any kind of noodles—just wait until the carrots have softened to add them)
1 tsp. garlic powder
½ tsp. ground black pepper
½ tsp. red pepper or paprika
½ lemon
2 tbsp. soy sauce
1 tbsp. cornstarch
salt to taste

1. Combine the following in a large pot: chicken, stock, water, olive oil, onion, celery, carrots, rice (unless you choose to use noodles instead), garlic powder, and peppers. Turn the burner to medium high heat.

2. Squeeze the lemon juice into a cup and pick out the seeds. Add both the juice and the rind to the soup.

3. When the chicken has cooked through, turn the soup to low and cover to simmer.

4. Once the carrots and rice are soft, add the soy sauce, sprinkle and stir in the corn starch, and add salt to taste (probably a lot). If you wanted to use noodles instead of rice, add them now and cook until soft. Remove lemon rind before serving. Leftovers freeze like a dream.