Creamy Sweet Potato, Kale and Smoked Turkey Soup

I have been gone from around here for nearly two months, and I'm sorry if you all came looking and I wasn't here. My husband was diagnosed with cancer beck in November and it has changed everything. Everything. More time spent in hospitals, and OR waiting rooms. I miss you. I've missed writing this blog, and especially, I've missed cooking. But since his ability to eat much is limited right now, cooking has taken a back seat to simple snacks like stewed fruit, grilled cheese and the occasional bowl of cereal. Not particularly interesting for a food blog.

A few weeks ago I had a lot of meals in the hospital cafeteria; while there are plenty of restaurants around Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, the weather was mostly in the single digits during the daytime, and only a crazy woman would venture out. I'm crazy, but not that kind of crazy. One day, after some sad and disappointing news from the surgeon, I went down to the cafeteria to drown my sorrows in soup.

They have pretty good food at Jeff; if you don't think so, you should try the dismal stuff they have at our local community hospital cafeteria, if you can ever find it open. Did I mention I've spent an awful amount of time hanging around hospitals? Anyway, the soup of the day was billed as Sweet Potato and Smoked Turkey Soup. Smelled wonderful and the color was gorgeous. The sweet potatoes were pureed into a creamy soup, and there were enough bits of smoky turkey and vegetables to keep it interesting. Soothing, satisfying and warming.  Good enough to know I could make a still better version. So here it is.

Please try to use organic vegetables in this if possible. More love in them. Fewer carcinogens, hopefully.  The easiest way to puree this soup is with an immersion blender. I use a Bamix. I've blown out practically every other brand until I got this Bamix. They invented the immersion blender, and they're made in Switzerland. Mine has lasted 8 years so far...Oh, and if you don't eat that piece of bread I have on the side of my bowl there, this soup is Paleo, dairy free, grain free, and gluten free, as long as your curry powder is gluten free. If you do dairy, a dollop of Greek yogurt, or sour cream on top would be nice.

Soothing creamy sweet potato, kale and smoked turkey soup.

Beautiful Creamy Sweet Potato, Kale and Smoked Turkey Soup

Two smoked turkey drumsticks (naturally smoked, free range if possible)
1 peeled large onion, studded with a single whole clove
1 bay leaf
1 large peeled carrot, sliced thick
1 large celery stalk, coarsely chopped
1 garlic clove, peeled
water
2 lb. sweet potatoes or orange yams, peeled and sliced into rounds
1 Tbsp curry powder, sweet or hot as desired
1 small bunch of Lacinato (Dinosaur) kale, sliced into ribbons (about 4 cups, packed)
salt and pepper to taste

1. Place the turkey drumsticks, the onion studded with the clove,  bay leaf, carrot, onion garlic and celery into a deep soup pot and fill with water until everything is covered by about 2" to3". Will probably be about 3 quarts of water. Bring to a boil, turn down to medium heat, partially cover and let simmer until the turkey is about to fall off the bone, about 45 minutes.

2. Remove the turkey, and set aside to cool. Remove the bay leaf, and the onion from the smoky stock. Remove the clove from the onion and discard the clove. Toss the onion back into the stock, along with the sweet potatoes, and the curry powder. Bring back to a boil, uncovered, and cook about 30 minutes, or until the sweet potatoes are falling apart tender.

3. Puree your soup smooth in the pot with your immersion blender (or carefully in a regular blender); you should have about 1-1/2 quarts of pureed soup. Shred the turkey meat into bite sized bits, and add it, plus the kale to the pureed soup. Simmer about 15 minutes until the kale is tender and the flavors meld. Taste for salt and pepper, then serve.

Makes about 6 hearty servings.

Curing the November Blues, Again: Lentil Soup with Speck & Kale

Another rerun. But until my Warrior gets out of the hospital. Reruns it is. Delicious nonetheless. 

Lentil Soup with Speck & Kale is a great lunch for a
gloomy, cold late Fall day.

I have the November blues. The cold is starting to already get to my Mediterranean  genes. We're halfway through November and I'm already looking for "Signs of Spring". The garden seed catalogs are still at least 6 weeks away, and since I'm planning a fallow year so I can work on the soil, I will be planting very little, and probably in Earth Boxes. The frost on the brown leaves on the ground makes them look like frosted cornflakes, but that just makes me think of the snow to come. It's getting dark way too early in the evening. That is not good. Am trying to think of things that will cheer me up. Maybe putting up the Christmas tree over the weekend will help. Maybe. This lentil soup, with speck and kale, though, and my favorite yellow, happy tablecloth will probably do the trick.

This is the kind of healthy soup that doesn't taste "healthy". Chock full of good stuff like lentils and kale, it'll warm you up without slowing you down. You could make this a vegetarian soup using olive oil in place of the bacon fat or butter, vegetable stock, leaving out the speck and adding about 2 drops of liquid smoke; also remember to use a vegetarian Worcestershire, or the Pickapeppa which has no animal ingredients. This is also gluten free.  A great carry-to-work-lunch, too, that will have your coworkers swooning around the microwave when you heat it up. Don't share unless you've brought extra.

Note: Speck is smoked proscuitto, and if your grocery or good deli doesn't carry it, use smoked bacon instead. It does not taste the same, but will still be delish.


Ingredients:

Lentil Soup with Speck & Kale
Serves 6

2T bacon fat or butter
3 oz. diced speck (can sub minced, smoked bacon)
1 lb. regular brown or green lentils, washed and picked over
1 large onion, diced finely
2 celery stalks, diced finely
1 large carrot, coarsely grated
1/2 cup minced red bell pepper
1 quart of homemade or no  salt added chicken stock
1 quart of water, plus extra if needed
2 bay leaves
1T dried marjoram leaves
1T dried thyme
2 tsp. Worcesteshire sauce or Pickapeppa sauce
Coarse salt and pepper

1 lb. kale, leaves and small stems only, blanched, squeezed out and chopped

2T good quality balsamic vinegar

Instructions:

1. Heat the bacon fat or butter in a deep soup pot, and sauté the speck until brown. 

2. Add everything else through the worcestershire sauce and bring to a simmer. Cook about 45 minutes to an hour until the lentils are tender .

3. Taste for salt and pepper and add as needed, stir in the kale and the balsamic vinegar, and heat through.  Serve piping hot.

Quick, Fabulous Mushroom Soup for the 5:2 / Fast Diet

Well, having been under the weather for the last month hasn't exactly helped my waistline any. I haven't really gained, but having had shingles has greatly reduced my ability to exercise. Feeling flabby. What it has done, though, is given me a little time to think up ways to make my fast days tastier. Since I am a firm believer in the Fast Diet (aka 5:2) which allows me the eat nicely on the 5 days I don't fast for my health, I'm always looking for tasty and filling foods to have on the 2 days I eat less. Usually this is Meaty Monday, but since it is a Fast Day for me, you're getting what I'm having today...

I love this mushroom soup. I love mushrooms, actually. I wouldn't make this with plain white button mushrooms as they are a little too bland. If they're all you can find, I recommend making it much more highly seasoned to make up for it. It's delicious, nutritious and quick. You need a pot, and a blender.  And a microwave if you want to garnish with a few mushroom slices...You can use a regular or immersion blender, although I prefer the totally smooth consistency you'll get with a regular container blender. Makes 4 good servings at less than 50 calories each.

Quick, Easy, Fabulous Mushroom Soup for the 5:2 / Fast Diet

Note: for a vegetarian version of this soup, replace the chicken bouillon with vegetable or mushroom bouillon, and the Worcestershire with either vegetarian Worcestershire or Pickapeppa sauce. All of the products I used are gluten free, but please read the labels if you are eating gluten free.

Creamy Mushroom Soup for the 5:2 Diet

Serves 4

1 lb. cremini mushrooms, 2 sliced, the rest chopped coarsely
4 cups water
1 packet chicken bouillon (I like Trader Joe's)
2 crushed garlic cloves
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
2 Tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
salt and pepper to taste
Chopped parsley or basil for garnish (optional)

1. Place the sliced mushroom in a small microwaveable dish, with a teaspoon of water, cover and microwave for 1 minute at high. Set aside. (you can omit this entirely if you don't want to pretty-up your bowl of soup.

2. In a medium saucepan, combine all the remaining ingredients through the Worcestershire, and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook , covered until the mushrooms are softened, about 10 minutes.

3. Carefully puree the cooked soup in batches, or with an immersion blender. Taste for seasoning, and  add salt and pepper as desired. Serve garnished with the microwaved mushroom slices on top and a sprinkle of fresh herbs.

Zucchini, Fennel and Spinach Soup with Basil: Another 5:2 Soup

Sorry for not having been posting for a few days. I do have an excuse; I have had shingles. While I am on the mend now, the last couple of weeks have been spent attempting to get some  sleep (highly unsuccessful) and smearing various goos all over the sore parts of me. Even considering cooking was more work than I could handle, although I did go in to my regular job more often than not. At home we ate from the freezer and takeout. Try to avoid getting shingles if you can. Painful, to say the least. Okay, VERY painful.


So this first post back isn't a Meaty Monday post, but a Fast Diet, or a 5:2 recipe for a soup I am planning to have today, and share with Donna at work. Takeout isn't good for my figure. Ahem.


This soup is deeply flavorful, but fresh tasting, quick to make, and partly stolen from a Rachael Rae recipe. It uses things you can still find in the farm markets and grocery stores in late September. It is also under 50 calories per serving, plus it is gluten free and vegan, unless you use a meat stock.

Zucchini, Fennel and Spinach Soup with Basil

Zucchini, Fennel and Spinach Soup with Basil

With a nod to Rachael Ray, as I saw a good-looking recipe in her magazine for a zucchini - fennel soup recently. My version still tastes rich, but will fit easily into your Fast Diet or 5:2 Plan.

1 lb. zucchini , diced (about 2 medium)
8 oz. fennel bulb , cored and sliced (about 1 small- medium)
2 shallots, sliced
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 cups baby spinach (85g)
2-4 Tablespoons sliced basil leaves
(optional: 1 tsp. chicken stock base)
few grinds of nutmeg and white pepper
sea salt

Place the zucchini, fennel, shallots and garlic in a large saucepan, and cover with water.  Add the stock base if you are using it. Salt lightly. Bring to a boil, cut back to a simmer, and cook about 10 to 12 minutes until the vegetables are tender.  Add the spinach, basil, nutmeg and pepper, and cook an additional 2 minutes or so until the spinach has wilted and is bright green. Taste for salt  and pepper and add if needed. Puree with an immersion blender, or a regular blender and serve hot. Makes 4 hearty servings under 50 calories each.

Fee,Fie, Foe, Friday: Carrots!

As the garden  season winds up, it's nice to see that Momma Nature is still carroting:

I think I see carrot soup in our future...

The 5:2 Feast: Fabulous Filling Soup for a Fast Day

Fifteen lousy, rotten pounds. I've been trying to lose  them for the last 8 years or so. They just sneaked onto my body when I wasn't watching, because, well, before I hit 45 or so, I never had to watch. I always ate what I wanted and it was quite a surprise to watch the scale just creep up. Who knew pizza for lunch and dim sum for supper would start packing on the pounds? So I am a bit of a Judy-come-lately to the dieting game. What makes it rather ironic, is that as a nutritionist, I counseled others on how to lose and help keep those extra pounds at bay.

So a few years back I joined Weight Watchers, and I gained three wonderful friends and a ton of Facebook friends, but weight wise, I yo-yoed up and down with the same 10 pounds. I learned that for me, I can stick to a "Plan" for a few days, and then real life intervenes with croissants. Counting every bite, every day, no matter in Points or in calories is a giant pain in the butt. All those aphorisms like "Nothing tastes as good as thin feels" are baloney. Obviously, whoever dreamed that one up has never had a chocolate dessert in a fine French restaurant with a good pastry chef. Or fresh homemade bread warm from the oven slathered in butter. Good food is a wonderful thing. Watching every bite you take forever is not a life; its a life sentence.

Back when I was in my 20's, I was very thin, I ate like a horse some days, and others, I just wasn't that hungry, so I ate little. And somewhere, somehow, over the years, I'd managed to lose track of what was actual hunger, so I grazed all the time. I did manage to stop gaining by watching my sugar and grain intake, and held at the same weight for years. But lose, no.

I'm not much for popular diets. When clients would ask about them, I'd usually suggest they try something reasonably well tested, like Weight Watchers, instead of whatever guru had a book on the NYT Best Seller List. But I knew in my heart the success rates are low, because no one really wants to eat skimpy portions every day, or cut out favorite foods. Highly motivated folks, those who are obese, or with big health issues, whose lives depend on their losing and keeping their weight off may be able to do it, but for most people, those of us who are just moderately overweight, its tough. A chunk of Brie, with a few crackers and a glass of wine tastes much better and is more soul satisfying than a diet crispbread with tablespoon of non-fat cottage cheese and a glass of water.

I ran into a classmate last month from grad school who looked wonderful. When we were studying dietetics, she was trying every fad diet under the sun, both to lose weight, and to write her thesis. She had watched the documentary  called "Eat, Fast & Live Longer"  while she was in England last summer and was doing their fasting program, which calls for 2 days of fasting, and 5 days of normal eating. You heard me. Normal eating. She'd lost 15 pounds. And kept it off. The documentary showed here in the States on PBS. So of course by the time, I tried to find it online, PBS had already pulled it, probably saving it for one of their fundraisers. I couldn't find a link. My brilliant friend Michelle, got her also brilliant husband Chris to find it for me online. This is it, with commercials, but truly worth watching: http://documentaryheaven.com/eat-fast-and-live-longer/  The book is called The FastDiet, and I highly recommend you get it and read it before embarking on this plan. http://www.amazon.com/The-FastDiet-Healthy-Intermittent-Fasting/dp/1476734941/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0

This is a lot the way I used to eat when I was thin, and I decided to give it a try. I've been on it 2 and a half weeks, today is my 5th fast day, and I have lost 4.5 pounds. And this week has included quite a few birthday treats  and dinners out.  Hunger really does just come in waves, and staying busy is good. Plus, I just tell myself I'm not going to starve to death missing a meal or two. I know that's true. Neither will you.

Since my buddy Amy keeps asking what I eat, here's a recipe for her. It's a very filling soup that I'll reheat at work tonight for my dinner. My 500 calorie fast day is usually 100 calories of Greek yogurt or a 100 calorie protein drink,  a lunch of a small green salad with a little tuna, tomato and balsamic vinegar, for another 100, and a 300 calorie dinner.

This Asian-inspired soup is very delicious,  spicy and satisfying. You can certainly use shrimp alone, or chicken alone or any other protein you like, if you keep the calories from the protein under 200.

A Fabulous 5:2 Meal in a Bowl
Spicy Chicken & Shrimp Asian- Style 5:2 Soup

Spicy Chicken & Shrimp Asian-Style 5:2 Soup
Serves 1
Note: to make this easy and fast to prepare, buy pre-frozen, individually wrapped, antibiotic free chicken breasts, and IQF bags of frozen, peeled raw shrimp. You can also use whatever vegetables you like or have, as long as they come to a total of fewer than 50 calories. Greens are good. A kitchen scale is also a good thing to have, if you truly want to be accurate.


1 8 oz. bag Shirataki noodles, spaghetti style
2 cups of water
1 teaspoon Thai Green Curry paste
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
dash of Thai fish sauce
1 teaspoon  grated fresh ginger
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 3- 4 oz. raw, boneless, skinless chicken breast
2 oz. raw small or cut shrimp, peeled and deveined
1/2 medium zucchini,  coarsely shredded
1 small scallion, thinly sliced
2 cups raw baby spinach, loosely packed
2 Tablespoons shredded fresh basil
2 teaspoons lime juice

1. Drain the noodles into a strained and rinse well.  Drain, and place in a glass measuring cup and microwave for a minute or two, and then drain thoroughly, cut into spoon-manageable strands (I use a clean scissors) and set aside.

2. In a medium saucepan, place the water, the curry paste, garlic powder, fish sauce ginger and salt, and bring to a simmer. Add the chicken breast,  cover, and cook for about 10 minutes until cooked through. Remove the chicken from the stock and  add the shrimp. Cook until just opaque, and remove the shrimp. Shred the chicken with two forks and set aside with the shrimp.

3. Add all the vegetables and bring to a boil. Cook for 1 minute. Add the noodles, the shrimp and chicken, and stir well. Stir in the basil and the lime juice and serve hot.

Disclaimer: Just under 300 calories, approx. Your calculations may differ, so please run your own numbers and adjust your ingredients accordingly.

Curried Creamy Tomato Soup with Chickpeas and Spinach: Recipe Evolution

Kasha, aka, The Farm Girl Cooks, posted a link on FB to an absolutely delicious-sounding recipe on the blog Three Many Cooks called "Curried Cream of Tomato Soup with Chickpeas and Spinach". I had everything in the house to make it. Perfect lunch for these damn cold, not-quite-spring days. Then I saw just two things I would need to change. My lactose intolerance won't allow me to use that much canned evaporated milk comfortably in my own food, and adding baking soda to acidic foods tends to reduce some of the  available vitamin content. 

I thought I'd just sub some of my coconut based coffee creamer for the evaporated milk and that would allow me to skip the baking soda too, since coconut products don't curdle in the presence of acids. Done, right? Wrong. While poking in the pantry for canned chickpeas I spied a can of light coconut milk, and a jar of Thai green curry paste. Hmmmm. Different flavor profile? Going to need to follow a Thai-ish line here, so will need to check out what else I have on hand to flesh out a variation. Maybe some basil and ginger? Not even close to authentic Thai, but wonderful, filling and healthy. 

While the "bones" are the same as the original recipe --tomato puree, chickpeas and spinach, the finished product is a very different soup. The result?  A recipe evolution.A dreamy, creamy, spicy, warming soup that, if your pantry and freezer is fairly well stocked, you can make from what you have around. Don't be afraid to change up the spices or sub good stock for the milk. A good madras curry will work here too, if you have some in your spice cupboard. It's by far the best lunch I've had all week--so good the girls at work were dipping their spoons into my bowl, too. Quick and easy deliciousness.

I'd like to thank the gang over at Three Many Cooks for the inspiration, and Kasha for pointing it out. This version is vegetarian,  vegan in fact, and dairy-free and gluten free. Maybe your version will evolve this recipe another fabulous step?

Curried Creamy Tomato Soup with Chickpeas and Spinach

Curried Creamy Tomato Soup with Chickpeas and Spinach

Ingredients:

1T safflower oil or olive oil
1 small onion, diced fine
1 T minced ginger (from a jar is fine)
2 crushed garlic cloves
1 T Thai green curry paste
1 13.5 oz. can light coconut milk
1 28 oz. can crushed tomatoes (organic if possible)
1 heaping T dried basil
1T  sugar or granular Erythritol
1 14 oz. can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
2 cups  baby spinach, packed, or 1 cup  frozen chopped spinach, thawed
3T minced fresh cilantro, or frozen cilantro
Kosher or sea salt

Instructions:

1. In a large saucepan, heat the oil until it thins and ripples, and then add the onion, ginger and garlic. Turn the heat to medium, and sauté until the onion begins to soften. stir in the green curry paste and cook for a minute longer.

2. Stir in the coconut milk and the crushed tomatoes and bring to a simmer. Add the basil and the sugar or erythritol, and let simmer for 5 minutes. 

3. Stir well, and then add the chickpeas and the spinach and cook until the spinach wilts, about another 3 minutes. Taste for salt, and add as needed. Stir  in the cilantro and serve.

Serves 3 - 4 

Easy Roasted Red Pepper & Tomato Soup with Orange

Yesterday was snowy and cold, today...wet and chilly. I'm not sure which is worse, but when my favorite attire is my ratty red fleece bathrobe, and a pair of ancient Uggs, its time for soup. But since I have to work for a living (imagine a food blogger that doesn't hang around home all day writing about her cool life!), long cooked soups are left for days off. Easy Roasted Red Pepper & Tomato Soup with Orange just tastes like you've spent all day cooking it. The tomato and pepper flavors are old friends, but the orange zest and juice lift it out of this world. 

This brightly flavored soup is quick to make, and is one I fall back on when  I need something that is both sophisticated flavor-wise and filling enough to turn a sandwich or a slice of vegetable tart into a top notch meal. It reheats well, so it makes a real bright spot in an otherwise mundane work lunch. 

Now you could make this in early summer with the first peppers and tomatoes, and I have, and it's delicious. This mid-Winter soup is strictly off the shelf, and out of the crisper drawer. I always have small cans of plain organic tomato sauce in the pantry, as well as a few small jars of roasted red peppers.  A drained 12 oz. jar of peppers is perfect. Don't leave out the orange; it really boosts the flavors of both the peppers and the tomato.

Easy Roasted Red Pepper & Tomato Soup with Orange

Easy Roasted Red Pepper & Tomato Soup with Orange

Serves 2

Instructions:

1 cup jarred roasted red pepper, rinsed, seeded and rough chopped
1 cup plain tomato sauce
1 small onion, roughly chopped
1 small leafy celery stalk, chopped small
1 smallish carrot, chopped or sliced thinly
1/2 tsp. dried basil
1 cup chicken or vegetable stock
zest of 1 orange
juice of 1 orange
1 tsp. sugar or granular erythritol
salt and pepper
Crème fraîche or plain Greek Yogurt as garnish, optional

Instructions:

1. Place everything through the sugar in a medium saucepan, bring to a simmer, cover and let cook until the celery and carrot are tender, about 15 -20 minutes.

2. Puree with either an immersion blender, or carefully puree in a regular blender. Taste for seasoning and add salt and / or pepper as needed.

3. Serve hot, dolloped with creme fraiche or yogurt.

Curing the November Blues: Lentil Soup with Speck & Kale

Lentil Soup with Speck & Kale is a great lunch for a
gloomy, cold late Fall day.

I have the November blues. The cold is starting to already get to my Mediterranean  genes. We're halfway through November and I'm already looking for "Signs of Spring". The garden seed catalogs are still at least 6 weeks away, and since I'm planning a fallow year so I can work on the soil, I will be planting very little, and probably in Earth Boxes. The frost on the brown leaves on the ground makes them look like frosted cornflakes, but that just makes me think of the snow to come. It's getting dark way too early in the evening. That is not good. Am trying to think of things that will cheer me up. Maybe putting up the Christmas tree over the weekend will help. Maybe. This lentil soup, with speck and kale, though, and my favorite yellow, happy tablecloth will probably do the trick.

This is the kind of healthy soup that doesn't taste "healthy". Chock full of good stuff like lentils and kale, it'll warm you up without slowing you down. You could make this a vegetarian soup using olive oil in place of the bacon fat or butter, vegetable stock, leaving out the speck and adding about 2 drops of liquid smoke; also remember to use a vegetarian Worcestershire, or the Pickapeppa which has no animal ingredients. This is also gluten free.  A great carry-to-work-lunch, too, that will have your coworkers swooning around the microwave when you heat it up. Don't share unless you've brought extra.

Note: Speck is smoked proscuitto, and if your grocery or good deli doesn't carry it, use smoked bacon instead. It does not taste the same, but will still be delish.


Ingredients:

Lentil Soup with Speck & Kale
Serves 6

2T bacon fat or butter
3 oz. diced speck (can sub minced, smoked bacon)
1 lb. regular brown or green lentils, washed and picked over
1 large onion, diced finely
2 celery stalks, diced finely
1 large carrot, coarsely grated
1/2 cup minced red bell pepper
1 quart of homemade or no  salt added chicken stock
1 quart of water, plus extra if needed
2 bay leaves
1T dried marjoram leaves
1T dried thyme
2 tsp. Worcesteshire sauce or Pickapeppa sauce
Coarse salt and pepper

1 lb. kale, leaves and small stems only, blanched, squeezed out and chopped

2T good quality balsamic vinegar

Instructions:

1. Heat the bacon fat or butter in a deep soup pot, and sauté the speck until brown. 

2. Add everything else through the worcestershire sauce and bring to a simmer. Cook about 45 minutes to an hour until the lentils are tender .

3. Taste for salt and pepper and add as needed, stir in the kale and the balsamic vinegar, and heat through.  Serve piping hot.

Italian Penicillin: Chicken Tortellini Soup

Italian Penicillin: Chicken Tortellini Soup

I whomped up this soup for my sister-in-law this morning. Granted, what she’s got is going to need a lot more than soup, but for the moment, soup will have to do. I’ve always called this soup Italian Penicillin, as it’s been known to cure middling sniffles, broken hearts and occasional hangovers. It’s a rich, chickeny chicken soup on steroids: Double strength chicken stock bolstered up by more chicken. Add in a nice mix of vegetables, herbs, some pesto or cheese tortellini, and serve it up in a big bowl sprinkled with good Parmesan. At this point it ceases to be a bowl of soup and becomes a bowl of love. That's all I can do for her right now, a big warm hug in a bowl.

Please try this recipe and feed it to those you love.

Notes: If you don’t make your own rich chicken stock, (I'll post a killer version that'll give you stock like this soon) I suggest looking for 4 quarts of no salt added chicken stock (it exists) and cooking it down by half. Or use the low sodium, boil it down, and add NO salt to the soup until you taste it. If you can’t find small dried soup tortellini, either use the small dried soup ravioli, or just add fresh or frozen regular tortellini after the vegetables are tender and cook for as long as the package directions tell you to.

Chicken Tortellini Soup aka Italian Penicillin

Serves 6

2 quarts of double strength low or unsalted chicken stock

4 large chicken thighs with skin and bone

1 large onion diced

1 cup sliced celery

1 cup diced carrots

2 garlic cloves minced

1 14.5- oz. can diced tomatoes with liquid

1T dry basil

1T dry oregano

1 tsp. dry thyme

2 bay leaves

pinch of hot pepper flakes

1 quart of water

½ pound of small dried soup tortellini (pesto or cheese filled)

1 10-oz. bag of baby spinach

Black pepper and salt to taste

Grated Parmesano Reggiano for serving, or a Pecorino Romano

Get a big soup pot, at least 8 quarts and dump the chicken thighs in, and then add the chicken stock. Bring it to a boil on high heat, cover, lower the heat and simmer for about 45 minutes until the chicken is tender. Remove the chicken to a plate with a slotted spoon and let it cool a bit.

Turn the heat back up under the now-enriched stock, and add everything up to and including the extra quart of water. Bring again to a boil and cook for about 10 minutes. Pick the chicken meat off the bones, cut into bite sized pieces and add the meat to the soup pot. Discard the skin and bones. Add the tortellini and cook about 15-20 minutes until they soften. Taste one to see if they’re done. Stir in the spinach and cook for two minutes. Add a little more water if it's not soupy enough as those tortellini can be thirsty!

Serve in a big bowl and pass the Parm or Romano on the side. Or put some in a big jar and take it to someone who needs a hug.