Chicken Soup

I made some chicken soup this evening. Dennis caught a cold and we all figured some soup would be nice. I did something different with it this time. Due to time constraints, instead of cooking the chicken in the water and making a nice stock, I popped the breasts I’d bought under the broiler. Ten minutes per side just about did it. They weren’t completely cooked, so if I were making the chicken for something other than a dish I wasn’t going to cook more I’d have let them go 11 minutes a side…maybe 12. Though, I just caught a “glimpse” from the corner of my eye of some guide holding his nose…so, maybe 12 minutes is too much.

Oh, I had a bad minute there towards the end of making the soup. I decided to use up some cork screw multi-colored rotelli pasta I had in the cupboard. I’d already used up half the bag and I don’t know how long they’d been in the cupboard. So, the soup is almost done. And, I dump in the pasta. And these dark colored bits start floating to the surface of the soup. Aghast, I start looking closely wondering if I’ve just tossed in a bunch of bugs too. I’m freaking. The first thing I think (this is what happens when you channel….you become Mrs. Honest)…is can I pretend to Dennis that it’s herbs I’ve tossed in the soup? Then, I keep stirring and ponder the possibilities of using a sieve to get them out. Then, one of the guides said, “It’s from the skin.” Wait…when I broiled up the chicken they suggested I put the skin in the broth too because I hadn’t allowed it all time to simmer and make a nice stock. They said it would be good. Except, some of it was charred, but I put it in anyway. So, I fished out a bit of the charred skin and start examining everything. To my relief, that’s what it was. Anyway, I couldn’t identify body parts (which I have some experience doing since I’ve dumped bugs in other things too). One of the guides said it wouldn’t have mattered anyway because lots of people eat bugs.