The season of perpetual illness is upon us, kicking off this season for Billy is a hefty dose of laryngitis. Who gets that?

To commemorate his birthday, the germs of all-hallows-eve have stripped him of his newly renewed (thanks to bilateral endoscopic surgery of the sinuses) voice. How will I nurse this birthday boy back to health, you ask? With a nice portion of clean and fresh chicken soup. This recipe makes sooo much soup, so if  you don’t want to eat chicken soup for the whole week, I suggest cutting back a bit

Using the store bought, pre-roasted chicken opened up some major possibilities, the main one being that I could use the meat for soup, and make a nice stock out of the bones/left over bits. To make the stock, I simply boiled the bones with carrots, celery, a rosemary branch, and some lemon (I suggest omitting the lemon if you don’t like the cooked lemon flavor, its quite strong) for 1 hour. It smelled better than the soup I was making.

Emylou’s Chicken Soup

1 Roasted Chicken *, picked to the bone of all meaty goodness
5 carrots, chopped in big chunks
1 whole celery bunch, chopped in large chunks
2 Leeks, coarsely chopped
1/5 onion, diced
1.5 cups uncooked rice
1 bunch chard, chopped to 1 inch piece
1 bunch cilantro, loosely chopped
6 garlic cloves
water
S&P

Soy Sauce
Ginger root
Rooster Sauce

Method: Begin by cooking the onions until translucent. Add the carrots and celery, followed by the leeks. Drop in 6 crushed cloves of garlic. Cook until very wilted. Cover with water, add rice. Cover with a lot of water, probably 10-15 cups of water. You will need enough liquid to cook the rice, and also leave room for the chard and cilantro, to be added after the rice is cooked. This is a personal preference thing. After the rice is cooked,drop in the chard/cilantro, and cook until wilted.Don’t forget to S & P throughout each phase, to taste.

To serve: ladle in the soup to your bowl of choice. Drizzle in 1-2 T of Soy sauce, and some rooster hot sauce, to taste. Complete by grading some fresh ginger over the bowl. Enjoy!

*pre-roasted or roast it yourself. the other day the store-roasted chicken was significantly cheaper than the whole uncooked chicken in the meat section, so I went with that. One could also just wait to make this after thanksgiving…oh the possibilities!

Also, I finally got a new camera! Check out this persimmon-chocolate cheesecake I made!

Cheesecake is so easy to make, if you can put up with the amount of animal goo you will consume. 4 8 oz cream cheese packages, 3/4 c sour cream, 1 cup persimmon puree, lemon zest, 1/2 c-1 c sugar, vanilla extract. Pour over crust of your liking in a spring -form pan, and bake 1 hour Breakfast anyone?