Chicken Soup Solves Everything

It has been winter in Nashville for about 3 weeks. Yes, you read that correctly, it has only been wintery weather here for 3 weeks. Before that, it was autumny, perfect weather outside for exercise, and there were even a couple mosquitoes still flying around. Oh, what a short 3 weeks will do to the memory, as we sit here complaining about how cold it is outside. Of course, since I live in the south USA, it really isn't that cold, and we are leaving the house without hats, scarves, gloves or socks! We are just not used to 30F weather anymore.


Anyway, to solve the cold weather blues, I made some chicken soup. I had chicken bones in the freezer from a roasted chicken I made a few weeks ago, and I brought that out for the stock. I made the stock fairly traditionally with onion, carrot, celery, bay leaf, garlic, a pinch salt, pepper, and some dried thyme that I saved from my organic herb garden back in October. I don't have butchers twine, so I did not tie up my thyme. As per usual, while we ate the soup, we had to pull out the thyme twigs that I was unable to remove during cooking. I don't want to use anything to tie up herbs besides clean, no-chemical string because I have visions of my soup turning chemically blue like in the Bridgett Jones movie.

We love mushrooms, so I added a quart of sliced creminis in the soup. To give the soup some teeth, I added a couple handfuls of barley. I love beef barley soup, so why not make chicken barley soup? I also added fresh diced carrots, celery, onions and chicken to the soup.

Here is my cup of chicken soup. At the very top of the cup you can see a thyme leaf stuck to the rim. Isn't it amazing how that mostly water pot turned into an almost creamy hearty soup? The soup was yummy, and exactly what a cold winter day called for.

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