Chicken and Rice Soup

This soup is one that my green thumb is especially proud of. I made a chicken dinner for my sister's family last Sunday and managed to really stretch that bird far! I made the chicken in the crock pot with some onions and carrots. We had a nice healthy meal together and I was left with a decent amount of chicken leftovers as well as a carcass to make broth.

Those bones with scraps of meat stuck to it is definitely something that would be trashed in most households. I really do not understand why though. Maybe I've convinced myself that going green is the way to go (it surely is!). When I tell people how I save my scraps of veggies in the freezer or my unwillingness to trash a bird carcass, they look at me like I have 3 heads. "What is wrong with this chick?" they must be wondering. "Why would she go through so much trouble when there are perfectly good packaged broths at the supermarket." Now, I don't judge, but I do wonder what makes these people try to argue or brush off my choices as an invalid way of life. While I do not bring it to their attention, I often wonder how a person can complain about lack of money or how unhappy they are with their body weight, when they are unwilling to take some small steps to fix the problem. My choices that get scoffed are actually made with a lot of thought behind them. I know the lifestyle that I try to live is a bit unconventional to modern day society. How dare I spend an extra 20 minutes making broth instead of running to the food store? That is just too much work! I often wonder why some people cannot see how far the benefits of a little extra work can stretch.

By making my own broth:

1. I am able to make use of every penny that I already spent. Meat and fresh vegetables are usually the most expensive items at the market, but are the most beneficial compared to packaged items. As a single mother, my dollars need to stretch as far as they can go. I cannot, in good conscious, throw out something that can be used again. 100% of my broths are created with leftovers and  veggie scraps from previous meals that would have normally been tossed down the garbage disposal. Chicken and vegetable broth is basically free to me!
2. I reduce the amount of preservatives and sodium. Even the low sodium choices still contain sodium and preservatives. If it cannot go bad, it is no good. Think of how long that broth had to sit on a shelf and then realize what had to be put into it to make that possible. When you use those packaged "goods", you are then putting all that stay fresh crap into your system. Who knows how long it will sit in your body and all the possible ways it could alter your natural chemical balance. Honestly, I do not swear off packaged goods completely, but I do my best to keep it to a minimum.
3. I help save the planet. We have all heard the statement, "Reduce, reuse, recycle". We know what each word means, but most people don't know that to be most effective in reducing your carbon footprint, this statement should be followed in order. First, you should reduce the amount of packaging you use. By reducing your intake of packaging materials, less gets sent to landfills or needs to be recycled. While recycling is great, it requires energy and fuel to do. By not purchasing store bought broth and storing my own in reusable containers (reuse glass jars of packaged products you have already purchased), I minimize the amount of waste produced in my home. 

Wow, this blog post is going to be longer than I had expected. I am really not a writer, but once I get started on a subject, sometimes I cannot stop. So basically, I used my carcass to make homemade broth. Monday morning before work I put the chicken carcass, the chicken neck, and some veggie scraps from my frozen broth bag into the crock pot. I then added two bay leaves and filled it with cold water. I read somewhere that cold water helps to better extract the vitamins before cooking them. While I have no idea if this claim is true, it doesn't hurt to start with cold water, so why not? I set my crock pot on low and went to work. Coming home to the aroma of brewing broth is fabulous! When I came home, I sifted all the bones and veggies out of the broth and then refrigerated it overnight. Once it has been cooled, you can scoop off the fat that settles on top and you have a nice healthy broth.

Usually I store my homemade broth in 2 cup portions and freeze them for later use. Since I had so much leftover chicken, I decided to make soup. We have had a pretty mild winter so far, but I think we are finally getting into the cold cold weather. What is better than some homemade chicken soup when you just cannot seem to get warm?

The night before,  I cooked up some brown rice to have with dinner and saved the leftovers to use with the soup.  This chicken soup is another crock pot meal that cooked while I worked, so I prepped everything in the night before. I diced up some carrots and celery, added a bag of frozen corn, shredded my leftover chicken, and then added some of the leftover onions from the original chicken dinner. All these items got tossed in the crock pot with 2 bay leaves and then refrigerated. Come morning, all I had to do was add broth, stir, and set to low. The rice was added once I got home from work. I don't have exact measurements for this soup, but with soup, you don't need them. Just add ingredients until you think it looks good. I think I used 3 stalks of celery, 5 carrots, a bag of corn, and approximately 12 cups of broth. Just make sure if you are adding rice into the soup towards the end of the cooking process, use more broth than seems necessary.

This soup was wonderful to have on hand this week, since we wound up with our first snow of the season. It did need a little salt and pepper. I don't like to add too much salt while cooking, figuring it can always be added at the end if needed. Sophia did really good eating this soup! She has never liked celery, but she loved it in the soup. She assumed the green things were peppers and ate all of them first. I did not inform her that they were in fact celery until they were all gone from her dish. She was amazed that she just ate something that she did not like! This is why I always put food on her plate and require her to try at least one bite every time we eat. Her tastes change daily, so sometimes figuring out what she will like is impossible. One thing she ALWAYS likes is bread. Good thing I made the choice to outlaw white bread in my home. Her favorite thing to do when we have soup is to dip a piece of bread into the broth. For some reason, she will eat her crust this way but not when it is a sandwich. Children are funny little people! Keeping up with her quirks is next to impossible, but always fun.