To Cure My Family

I am making homemade chicken noodle soup to boot out these sick germs that we've been hosting for a week or so. I realize that my friends have had it much worse, but I just can't deal with it any longer. I work full time at home being a mom and transcribing insurance claim interviews.

And I haven't gotten the hang of taking pictures to document my moves yet, so this is another one without pictures.

I chopped 2 onions using my mandolin slicer. I peeled the dry skins off and then sliced the onions almost the whole way down in one direction. Then, using the guard, I pushed the onion across the mandolin with the "chopping" blade so that it cut little squarish pieces. VOILA! And hardly any tears from onions!

Next I threw in a bag of frozen carrots. I think I may have had some carrots in the fridge, and I try to use the frozen stuff for emergencies, but I was just not in the mood to slice carrots this morning.

I added some really thick chicken gravy leftovers from the fridge, just to use it up, and added 6 cups of water. I will probably end up putting in some "better than bouillon" chicken-flavored paste later.

Threw in 4 smallish frozen chicken breasts (I am cooking this on high).

Added some fresh cracked pepper, enough to see that I had added it; about 1 tsp red pepper flakes; 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper; about 4 sprigs of dried rosemary crushed in my hands after pulling the leaves off the twig (that was actually kind of fun/therapeutic); 1/2 tsp cumin; and a little bit of grated nutmeg as I had no allspice (my friend gave me a real nutmeg and I used my grater/zester that I got for Christmas and haven't ever used!).

*Don't forget the noodles! Time allowing, I will make a quick batch of homemade noodles to drop in at the end. They taste so much better than store-bought egg noodles! I'll let you know a recipe if I do that...

Set the crockpot on high and timer for 4 hours! Here it almost 30 minutes later and I'm already starting to get the first smells wafting through my house! So excited!

I did adapt this recipe from "Best Chicken Soup for Colds and Flu" found at GroupRecipes.com Best Chicken Soup for Colds and Flu.

I'll be serving this with homemade French bread not made by me. But I'm going to see if I can find the recipe she used!