FOR DINNER

FOR ME

TWO TO GIVE AWAY and ONE TO FREEZE

Aren’t these vegetables gorgeous?

The gorgeous picture along with the fact that this is the THIRD batch of this soup I’ve made in the last two weeks inspired me to blog the recipe.  Even when we don’t have The Flu, this soup is still wonderfully delish!  Credit for the recipe goes to my e-maginary friend Chloe, a fellow Sonlighter who shared this recipe with us over two years ago.

Chloe’s Famous Virus Killing Soup

• One chicken
• Appx 15-30 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
• 1 Tbs salt
• 3-4 Thyme sprigs
• Cayenne pepper (to taste. I use about a tsp)
• Fresh Rosemary sprigs
• Fresh ground pepper

Place chicken and other ingredients in a soup pot (I use my pressure cooker) and cover with water or chicken broth (I really like those boxes of organic chicken broth). Cook on stove top until chicken starts to fall apart. Remove from heat. Strain out chicken and stuff and set aside until cool enough to chop. Reserve broth for next step.

• 1 large onion (coarsely chopped or sliced)
• 1 fennel bulb (sliced thin)
• 1 leek (sliced thin)
• 4-6 stalks of celery (coarse chopped)
• large red pepper (coarse chopped)
• 1/2 lb. carrots (coarse chopped)

• 2 tbs olive oil
• 1/2 C good White Wine
• salt and pepper

Place oil in bottom of large pot and heat. Add onion, fennel, celery, pepper and leek and saute until onion just transparent. Add wine and simmer for 3-4 minutes. Cover the vegetables with chicken broth from chicken–add more broth from can or box if you don’t have enough broth from chicken and simmer veggies until just tender.

• Frozen green beans
• Frozen peas
• zucchini
• flat leaf parsely (chopped)
• 1-2 cans chopped tomatoes with juice
• salt and pepper to taste

Add these above ingredients and simmer until everything is tender. Add chopped chicken, salt and pepper to taste.

No virus can withstand this soup.

You can also add cabbage with the end ingredients if you like (We love cabbage!), or any other veggies your family likes.   Go ahead and throw in whatever’s in your vegie bin!     The next day add egg noodles and turn it into chicken noodle soup.

We had a real live Sunday Dinner today. Maybe for the first time ever in our own home.

Before church this morning I put country ribs, an onion, and a jar of sauerkraut in the slow cooker with a little salt to taste. After cooking on high for four hours the meat was perfectly cooked for our 1:00 pm dinner. I quickly made some instant mashed potatoes (for some reason my family loves these ???) and steamed broccoli in the microwave. Flower Child set the table with our pretty stoneware and I made sure to use the serving bowls that matched.

And it was so easy!

The only thing missing was company.

Growing up, Sunday Dinner was the domain of my grandmother and it usually consisted of donuts bought after church and brought to her house. But it wasn’t about what we ate. It was about my parents, aunt, cousins, and siblings talking, laughing, arguing… just being together.

We’ve lived most of our lives away from our parents, so my children have never had Sunday Dinner on a regular basis. Until recently our Sunday afternoons were spent at a soccer field somewhere, with all of us in a rush to get there on time as soon as church let out. Now that Rooster and Flower Child are no longer playing travel soccer we don’t have this time constraint.

And now I want to start a tradition of Sunday Dinner at our house. And I want to invite people over as often as possible. Older couples and family from our church. Friends from our community and homeschool group. Missionaries and visiting pastors. Young and old, saints and sinners, the popular and the lonely, rich and poor.

I want dinner to be ready in the slow cooker at home, ready for a spontaneous invitation!

Romans 12:10-13
Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another; not lagging in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord; rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer; distributing to the needs of the saints, given to hospitality.