Happy Thursday!

So I got news last night that my grandma’s funeral will be this Saturday morning. That means that Neil and I get to take a 12 hour road trip to Alabama tomorrow! It sounds awful, but I really like road trips since we used to drive everywhere when I was younger.  I reached out to the interwebs for any healthy food recommendations along either I-81 or I-95, so if you have any suggestions, please feel free to comment!

I had mentioned that the other night I made crock pot chicken noodle soup, so today I wanted to share the recipe with you.  It was super easy; all I had to do was cut up the vegetables and put everything in the crock pot.  When I woke up, there was soup!

Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

• 8 cups chicken broth (I used Pacific brand organic so there wasn’t extra junk in it)
• 4 or 5 carrots, cut into 1/4″ slices
• 5 celery stalks, cut into 1/4″ slices
• 1 medium onion, cut into chunks
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 bay leaves
• 1/2 tsp dry thyme
• 2 tsp kosher salt (I’m sure any salt would work)
• black pepper, to taste
• ~1 lb chicken breast (I used pre sliced breasts so they were thinner)
• 8-12 oz egg noodles

1. Place all of the ingredients except egg noodles into the slow cooker. Cook on low for about 8 hours (I did 9 because I like to sleep) or high for about 4.
2. Once the time is up, remove the chicken and cut into smaller pieces.  You can do this before you put it in the cooker too if you want, but I didn’t want the chicken to become too dry.
3. My slow cooker would not hold the soup plus the noodles, but if yours does, after the allotted time put the uncooked noodles in and cook for about another 20 min.  I cooked ours separately and then combined together in a big soup pot.
4. Enjoy!

This soup was fantastic and tasted even better than the canned versions.  Feel free to play around with the spices to suit your tastes.  I really like making my own foods at home because I know what goes into them and I can use minimal ingredients.

So tonight I am off to try running again tonight at the gym.  Hopefully there won’t be any surprise phone calls again.  I doubt that I will be able to post anything again until Monday, so I hope that everyone has a great weekend and I will be back with some “on the road” (not the book) adventures.

Question of the day: Have you ever made homemade soup? What are some of your favorites? GIVE ME THE RECIPES (I am aware that is not a question).