And I never quite got it to taste like chicken soup
Well I cannot tell you how much chicken soup I have eaten during the pandemic
Quite a bit
I mean I guess I could have had it more because I haven't had it every single week
But I don't think there has been one month where I didn't have it twice or rather I didn't cook it twice generally I get more than one meal out of it
Now I've seen a lot of people when they cook the chicken soup they might cook it with the vegetables in it but then they take the vegetables out but I do not do that
and I have experimented with other vegetables but pretty much the essential vegetables are carrots celery and onion You can have other vegetables but you have to have those and it's not really improved by the addition of other vegetables
And generally I use noodles
But every once in a while to mix it up I have rice
Rice makes it a little hardier I think
It also makes it seem a little healthier
It's funny because if I'm buying chicken soup in cans I mean I might buy like one of those big generic cans of chicken noodle soup from concentrate because you can eat that
And realistically I ate that when I was a kid I don't hate it but if I'm going to buy chicken soup in a can to enjoy I think the only kind I've ever really liked in the canned soups is the progresso chicken with rice
I'm not a big can soup buyer
Although I will say there was a time in my life when I was in my twenties and in college that I thought the answer just the answer was to have a bunch of cans of Campbell's cream of whatever soup and a box of white Zinfandel in the fridge because if you mix any of those cans of cream of mushroom soup with I mean essentially white wine but at that point it was the '80s and white Zinfandel was like the thing right and this was after I had taught myself to drink wine but you know I didn't have a big budget and you could get a big box of that white zinfandel for pretty cheap and it would last forever cuz it's packaged in those cryopak things that are gravity-fed
It's just kind of funny to me that I thought that was you know like acceptable food
and I suppose I could try it again now it's probably not bad I mean I didn't ever have bad palate but that was my idea of cooking quickly for myself in my twenties
I did a lot of microwave baked potatoes
I did a lot of microwave chicken breasts
I got when I got my Macy's card I got this pan well I got a couple of different pans they were calphalon anodized aluminum I think is what it's called not the stainless steel ones I got to skillet and I got a like regular pot I don't know what you call those things saucepans is that what they're called sauce pans that had a steamer insert and then I started cooking things where I was like steaming chicken or fish and vegetables and then I would make a sauce with the cream of chicken or cream of mushroom or cream of asparagus or cream of celery there's a whole bunch of cream of soups mixed with white zinfandel and that was my fancy sauce
But I got to be honest with you and there were plenty of times when I just ate microwave popcorn or one part of one of those ring cakes you can buy at the store for pretty cheap
But I hate microwave popcorn the way a lot of people in college ate ramen
I would get that super movie theater extra ultra butter kind and I would eat it and then I would I'm not kidding you I would lick that like greasy salty yellow stuff off the packets and say yum yum yum because there used to be no limit to the amount of salt I thought was good
When I was a kid I put salt on everything
I put salt on cottage cheese
Which I feel confident I got from my father
But the idea of salt on cottage cheese is really gross to me now and I can't remember the last time I was at a restaurant and I put salt on something I used to always put salt well no probably whenever I went to a place where I got eggs because I put salt on eggs and they don't usually put salt on eggs when they're cooking them I don't think but for some reason eggs taste gross to me without salt
But like generally when I would go to a restaurant which I haven't done in a while I mean Jesus since March I guess but when I would go to a restaurant I would always when I was a kid put salt on it I don't even think I tasted it before I put salt on it I just assumed everything needed salt but now I'd say a lot of things are too salty for me The same way a lot of things are too sweet for me
Anyway chicken soup is good I like chicken soup
Generally what I've done is bake a chicken and then put the bones and extraneous meat on the chicken into the crock pot and cook it for like a day and a half or something to make a bone broth and then put in the vegetables and like a couple of thighs and the noodles but those you got to put in like kind of at the last minute so it's chock full of ingredients sometimes there's not enough broth and you've got to like add broth to it but at the beginning of the pandemic I got multiple jars of that bone broth that they sell at the grocery store and I haven't even used any of them because every time I go to make soup I just make bone broth in the crock pot
My mother was not a very good cook but she was pretty decent at chicken noodle soup well no not chicken noodle soup she never put noodles in it but chicken soup she would put a lot more vegetables she would always put like squash what else did she put in there she might have put potatoes yeah I think she did I don't think potatoes are really necessary especially if you're if you're putting noodles or rice then the potatoes are kind of too much but I think she put potatoes and I know she put squash and she might have put in other things I mean I kind of think she didn't have a recipe I kind of think she just took whatever there was available and threw it in there The fact that my mother could make a decent chicken soup is like a testament to the fact that chicken soup is so fundamentally solid that it's hard to totally screw it up
But yeah carrots and celery and onions I'm standing by that
The cat is howling I've got to go feed him again
