Hello, friends.

I’m still bedridden with pneumonia, but the husband has been taking good care of me.

Soup, hot tea and acorn squash.  What a good husband!

It’s humbling that I can barely make myself a sandwich, let alone work out.  All this laying around is driving me stir crazy, and I’m realizing what a blessing it is to be able to sweat!  The next time I find myself grumbling about waking early to go to the gym, I’ll have to remember this whole week of immobility.  You never know what ya got until you don’t!

FOOD
One afternoon while Jay was at the gym, I shuffled to the kitchen and made myself some soup.  The canned stuff is good and all, but the preservatives and high-sodium levels were enough motivation for me to muster up the strength to do it right:

This was my first time making chicken noodle from scratch, but hey, how hard can it be?

On hand were two low-sodium, 32-oz cartons of chicken broth.

I had picked a low-salt carton too, but I don’t recommend it.  It made the soup kinda bland, and what’s the point of the broth if you don’t taste it?  (Other than it’s nutritional aspects).

I emptied both cartons into a large pot over high heat, along with a few chopped up organic carrots and celery, then got to work cooking two chicken breasts in a skillet.  I had cubed them up first, making for fast and thorough cooking.  It was my first time splurging on the organic, grain-fed chicken meat, and I found them to be smaller in size.  This was a relief, because I’ve learned from my travels that healthy chickens are actually quite small, and that our chicken breasts here in the U.S. are huge due to all the hormones and steroids pumped into them.  Factory chickens grow so unnaturally fast that their legs actually break under their rapid weight, leaving them to spend the rest of their pre-nugget lives immobile and invalid.  Real appetizing.

When the broth got to boiling, I added a box of Ronzoni Veggie pasta, which was way too much.

I love thick and hearty soups, but the pasta stole the show on this one, absorbing most of my chicken broth.  I recommend using 1/3 of the box, at most.

After throwing in the chicken, salt & pepper and some Italian seasoning, it was good to go!

For a first-timer, it wasn’t too shabby.  It definitely hit the spot where the canned stuff just wasn’t cutting it!

QUESTION OF THE DAY
What’s your go-to meal when you’re feeling under-the-weather?