Good Old Sick Day

Sometimes there’s nothing like a good old sick day. Monday morning I woke up around 5am in the kind of fog that reminded me of Brigadoon. I just knew there was no way I could get it together for work so I left a probably embarrassing message on my boss’s voicemail. I got back into bed and woke up at 9, which is sleeping late for me. Despite being in a fog, I quickly went about planning my day. There is something about being at home during the work week that presents an almost child-like glee. Regis & Kelly are definitely on the doc. Maybe Rachael Ray (I’ve been meaning to check that show out) and what about the 6 months of series I’ve been DVRing? There’s a slew of Food Network shows to watch (especially around the holidays!!!) and there’s always the bad 80s movie playing on some obscure HBO channel & a Lifetime tear jerker for good measure.

In the midst of all this sickness & plotting tv schedules, I realized I was hungry and whipped together a soup. Now, if I had any inkling that I would home Monday sick, I would have bought a chicken and made soup the real way. But sometimes you just have to work with what you have. Here’s my Sick Soup – it’s a little kitchen sink and only takes about 20 minutes to pull together.

Dump 2 cans of chicken broth into a pot on medium heat. Cut celery & carrots into a rough chop & half an onion into very thin rings. Add these into the soup and bring it up to a rolling boil. The idea here is to boil it long enough for the onions to become translucent. I added in 2 bay leaves (for that all day flavor) and 1 cup of orzo. You can add any macaroni or pasta you have in the pantry. Remember, it’s kitchen sink. Cook the orzo until it’s al dente. I also added a boneless breast I had hanging out in my fridge. I just chopped it and added it in the boiling stage. When the chicken was done, I added in another can of broth since the orzo absorbed most of the broth. And, voila it was done!

It was so good that CityCrab pleaded with me to stop cooking while I was home sick. We ate it all week long.