Friday: Chicken Vegetable Soup with Brown Rice

As we draw to the end of the week, I feel like I've been doing pretty good on my grocery haul. Thanks to some scary flu symptoms I downed several gallons of chicken bone broth yesterday (seasoned with ginger and lemon) and I feel infinitely better. I still have three eggs, two lemons, some ginger, some olives, a handful of salad greens, half a head of broccoli, one carrot, four stalks of celery, one tupper of cooked chicken, half a jar of chicken juice, and one unopened carton of blueberries in the fridge. The goal is to "spend down" all the perishables every week, so we're doing ok. But after today, I think we'll be in better shape, because I'm making SOUP.

When I was growing up my grandma always used to collect any uneaten salad from family gatherings and take it home to make a soup. The thought terrified us kids. While I don't hope to go quite that far, I like to think this soup draws some inspiration from her thriftiness.

Leftovers.

Ingredients:

1 carrot, chopped finely
2 stalks celery, chopped finely
1 tupperware of precooked chicken meat
2-3 cups chicken juice from roasted chicken (note: salty!)
1/3 cup frozen corn
1 head broccoli, chopped
Handful of salad greens and parsley
Bay leaf
Peppercorns
1/2 cup brown rice

Instructions:

1. In a large pot, bring chicken juice, 6-8 cups water, carrot, celery, chicken, frozen corn and brown rice to a boil. Add bay leaf and peppercorns, reduce heat to a simmer.
2. Throw in chopped broccoli, salad greens, and parsley. Cover and set timer to 20 min. After 20 min, remove cover and simmer for another 10-15 min or until rice is done.
3. Serve, with croutons if that's your thing, and eat.

Optional: drop an egg into the bowl before serving; add more salt & pepper & parmesan to taste.

FACTS AND FIGURES 

Prep time: <10 min. 

Servings: 4-6
Agony rating: 3/10. Cooking needs watching/multiple steps.
Taste and stuff: It's a little bland, but light, and surprisingly filling.

*COSTS OF STUFF I HAD TO BUY SPECIAL*

Again, it's hard to parse out the cost of the ingredients since these were all remnants from other recipes this week, but it's mostly about the cost of the chicken. $10? $12? $15? I have no idea. 

Now, what to do with the leftover blueberries and ginger? (Edit: solution found.)

Fast Baked Salmon with Spinach Salad and Sweet Potatoes

Today was one of those crazy days where I had to really hustle to get a cooked meal on the table by 8. I had promised to do a live webcast with a group of students at 7 from home, so I left work at 5:30 on the nose, ran to the grocery and grabbed two fine-looking salmon steaks and two lemons, and was home by 6:20. Thankfully this thing took only fifteen minutes to prep, and so all I had to do was pop it in the oven and tell husband to take it out when the timer went off.

We still have a lot of sweet potatoes left over from Monday, so I decided to add those as a side dish. Add a tiny spinach salad, and this dish is near perfect!

I used my Dutch oven - one dish, easy to clean, makes food taste good.

Love you, Le Creuset.

Ingredients:

2 or however many salmon steaks you want
1/4 lemon per salmon steak
Pepper
Salt
Olive oil
Dried rosemary

Preheat oven to 400 F. Coat the bottom of your Dutch oven with olive oil. Throw in salmon steaks. Cover with salt and pepper, rosemary, and thin slices of lemon and lemon juice.

Hello, my lovelies.

 Then cover and set the timer for 20 minutes.

While that business is happening, prep your plates with the salad. I used spinach, tomato, and canned artichokes. We buy prewashed salad greens and two or three tomatoes every week, and I always keep croutons and olive oil in the house, so this wasn't anything that needed much planning. The artichokes were a find--I bought them a few weeks ago for some unknown purpose and tucked them in the back of the fridge. Obviously skip these if you are low FODMAP.

Top with a generous pour of olive oil followed by a drizzle of balsamic vinegar. Add some croutons (skip if you're not eating wheat/gluten) if you have them right before serving.

I used my last three minutes to stick the leftover sweet potatoes into a pie tin and added them to the oven, next to the salmon. Then I ran to the bedroom, where I did the webcast.

At 7:55, I emerged and was greeted by a finished but slightly lukewarm feast. Just look at all those colorful antioxidants!

One of these days I'll figure out how to take a less blurry photo.

So, how did I do?

Overall, I was really happy with this meal. And it performs well according to 4 out of 5 of my rules:

1. The rule of waste. Awesome. You buy a salmon steak, you eat the salmon steak. Plus I got to use leftovers. And I will definitely find a use for the spinach, artichokes, lemon and tomato I didn't use.

2. The rule of cost. Not so good. Salmon is expensive.

3. The rule of time. Killed it. Fifteen minutes of prep, twenty minutes of (passive chef) cooking, and quick cleanup.

4. The rule of health. Awesome. Salmon = protein, omega 3s; you've got your dark leafy greens in both the salad and the side dish; some good beta carotene and vitamin C in the other veggies and lemon juice; and decent amount of non-grain fiber.  Plus, the meal is low in FODMAPs, lower if you omit the artichokes and mushrooms.

5. The rule of Cartman? We always follow the rule of Cartman in this house. 


FACTS AND FIGURES
 
Prep time: 15 min
Servings: 2
Agony rating: 2/10. So easy! Tomatoes and lemon needed slicing, and the jar of artichokes took a while to pry open. But the only cleanup was a cutting board, a knife, two plates, two forks, a serving spoon, the pie tin for the sweet potatoes and the Dutch oven.
Taste and stuff: 8/10. Husband loved it. I thought the salmon could have used more salt and lemon.

*COSTS OF STUFF I HAD TO BUY SPECIAL*


Spinach: $3.99 for a 5 oz tub; I used about 2 oz., so $2
Lemons: 2 for $1.20; I used 1/2, so $0.30
Salmon steaks: $11.79
Artichokes: $2.19 a jar; I used 1/3; so $0.73
Tomato: Guessing here, but let's say it was $.50 worth of tomato
Croutons, olive oil, vinegar, rosemary, salt, pepper: pantry staples, already bought
Total cost of stuff I had to buy special: $15.32
Cost per serving: $7.66


VERDICT: SUCCESS.