chicken noodle soup.

there are few foods that are universally loved by the masses. chocolate you might say, but no, not always the case. i remember a kid in my grade school who was allergic to chocolate, so every time another kid brought in their birthday treat there was a lone store bought non-chocolate non-treat that always looked so pathetic in comparison to the delicious choclateness of my youth. maybe the poor bastard even liked chocolate, but his body would physically repel it, or maybe he had a nervous mother that wanted to control his sugar content or he maybe he really, really didn't like chocolate. who knows, but chocolate is not universally loved nor is this post even about chocolate. so enough of my segues!

when i sat down to try and think of a food that everyone i knew loved the only item i could come up with was chicken noodle soup. think about it, have you ever heard anyone say "ohhh gross! chicken noodle soup!" ? i certainly haven't. in fact it's usually the opposite, as in "ohh chicken noodle soup, i would like me some of that!" i've made chicken noodle soup a number of times, enough times actually that i felt cocky enough to make it sans recipe.

first, i heated a big soup pot to medium and added a tablespoon of olive oil (combo of regular old olive oil, scallion oil and garlic oil). then i added 2 carrots, 4 celery stalks and only 1 of the onions pictured.
as those sauteed up in the oils, i added a teaspoon of salt, 1/2 teaspoon of pepper and a sprinke of all these spices:

so thats garlic, parsley, bay leaf, chicken seasoning and thyme. then once the veggies softened up for about 15 minutes at medium heat i added 1 tablespoon of flour. then added 4.5 cups of chicken broth and 4 cups of water.
once i added the liquid, i ramped up the heat to come to a boil and turned my attention to the chicken. a lot of recipes call for poaching the chicken right in the broth but in all honesty, the idea of that totally grosses me out. it makes me think samonella will be swimming in the broth. ew! i know this isn't true, but i just can't make myself put a whole raw chicken breast into lovely broth. so i just seasoned the breasts with salt, pepper and a little poultry seasoning and sauteed on medium heat for about 6-7 minutes per side.

then shredded them up, a la chicken salad time of late summer.
i added it right to the broth and let the soup simmer for about 45 mintues. then i added about 4 servings of fusilli right to the broth and let them cook for a good 15 minutes. the water wasn't really a rolling boil anymore so i though it best to give the the noodles a bit longer to soften up.

i then served up some soup (in my favorite bowl of course) with a nice slice of rosemary bread that nelzo had purchased last night at the 'Teeter. a great addition btw. i thought of making some baking powder biscuts a la Julia, but since we already had the delicious bread on hand and i made homemade soup for lunch. on a tuesday. i patted myself on the back and sopped up the soup with the store-bought bread before taking a mininap. shhhh! i'm also convinced that chicken noodle soup also has some sort of sleep-inducing, tryphopan-like aroma because it always, always makes me want to take a little snooze once consumed.