Monthly Archives: September 2025

Chicken Noodle Soup

American Soup

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CHICKEN NOODLE SOUP

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INGREDIENTS
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1¼ pounds chicken breasts
¼ lb carrots
3 celery stalks
1 medium yellow onion
4 garlic cloves
9 cups chicken broth, a bit more than 2 quarts
½ teaspoon basil
2 bay leaves
¼ teaspoon black pepper
½ teaspoon Poultry MagicTM spice
½ teaspoon coriander
½ teaspoon oregano
½ teaspoon tarragon
1 teaspoon thyme
1½ tablespoons butter
2 tablespoon olive  oil
12 ounces egg noodles
Serves 8.  Takes 1 hour 25 minutes.
PREPARATION
Cut chicken breasts into ½-inch cubes. Dice carrots. Devein, or remove long, silky strings from outside of celery stalks by breaking stalk in half and pulling apart. Dice celery and onion. Mince garlic cloves. Pour chicken broth into large pot. Add chicken cubes, basil, bay leaves, pepper, poultry spice, coriander, oregano, tarragon, and thyme. Cook at medium high for 20 minutes. Stir enough to prevent burning.
Add butter to pan. Melt butter at medium heat. Don’t turn your back at this step; butter melts fast. Add olive oil, carrots ,celery, onion, and garlic to pan. Sauté at medium heat for 7 minutes or until vegetables are soft.  Stir enough to prevent burning. Add the sautéed carrot, celery, and onion to the pot. Cook at medium-high heat for another 7 minutes. Add noodles to soup and cook according to instructions on noodles’ package. Stir enough to prevent burning.
Chicken-noodle soup is good for your health, goes well with biscuits and has been an American favorite for years.
TIDBITS
1) Oregano looks a lot like marijuana, but it cannot get you high or cure glaucoma. As of yet, there are no medical-oregano stores, not even in the most progressive states.
2) Another food that both starts and ends with an “o” is the mighty OreoTM cookie. Most nutritionists hold that this delicacy is not the healthiest of foods. The OreoTM is, however, one of the tastiest morsels on this Earth. As long as you don’t spice it with oregano. Or even garlic.
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I Was Beside Myself Today

When my future hung in the balance.

Future me scowled. He pointed to his suitcase. “Ow!” Perhaps he should have pointed with his free hand. “You have a purpose.” He scowled again. “And change out of those pajamas. They have baby dinosaurs on them. And at noon as well.”
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I stiffened. I tried to pull myself up to a full six feet, four inches. I failed though, being only six feet tall. “I’m retired. I can wear what I like, whenever I like. So bugger off.”
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“Listen Paul,” said the stranger. “I haven’t come to set you on the path to sartorial splendor. Heck, I remember wearing those dino pajamas to dinner, sometimes later than that.”
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A bulb lit up above my mead, a low-wattage one sure, but it still went off.
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“So you’re me.” I had originally thought, ‘Your me,’ but I corrected that mental typo before either of us noticed. What brings you back. Did you want to be beside yourself?”
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I thought sure he’d guffaw at that jest. He didn’t.
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He looked like a man who’d been forced to feed lutefisk to his children.
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I tried to lift the mood.
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“Why did the man cross the Mobius strip?”
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“To get to the same side.”
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Nothing, That knee slapper left future man shrouded in gloom.
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My synapses fired. “Why are you so sad? What can I do?”
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He pointed to the suitcase. “It’s full of Amos Keeto novels.”
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“Amos Keeto, the master of culinary noir.”
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He nodded.
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“Well future me, what do you want me to do?”
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“Take them back to the library. Now! Don’t run up five years of library fines. You’ll lose all your savings, your home, everything. Those librarians are a byword for terror. You’ll wander the streets muttering, ‘but they were such page turners.’ You’ll earn just enough for your daily meatball, by selling snot to biochem warfare labs. Please return then now.”
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And so I did. I even changed into street clothes to do it.
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My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.

 

Categories: about me, what I did | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

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