Have you ever been invited to go somewhere and think "oh I'm not sure I want to do that" but then you go anyway as you don't want to hurt anyone's feelings because you're an old stick in the mud? Well next time I have that I'm not sure feeling, I'm staying in. My stitch group, eight of us I think, decided we'd go as a group to Dragon Mart way out in the middle of the desert and we'd shop then have lunch. So my expectation was we'd be back by 1 or 1:30...well at 3 we were finally underway and they wanted to stop at yet another place, the Outlet Mall and I felt like an idiot begging them to do it another day or drop me at a taxi ...and I was the one who sat on a bench and did a lot of waiting, still with my old arthritis rearing it's ugly little head all the time I got really worn out between 9:30 and 3. Life Lesson # 6 Never go shopping with 7 other women! Thus by that night I started getting a sore throat and next day even worse and next day the full blown cold! I know I just wore myself out. You see Dragon Mart is gigantic, like maybe a mile long? not sure...but I know we covered a lot of area. As soon as we got back I went to bed, straight down for a nap, crashed, boom, out like a light! Then woke up sick. So now I have that nastiest of nasties a cold. So what do I do for a cold, well when I can gather my wits about me which I think I just did, I make a pot of Chicken Noodle Soup. Homemade of course.
Todays Version of Chicken Noodle Soup
I had leftover already boned chicken pieces in the freezer. I began by cutting up one sweet onion and two big pieces of celery and three garlic toes, those I sauteed until clear in lemon olive oil (find that at Carlucci's either in person or on line at http://www.carluccios.com/shop) oh it made the veggies smell delicious as they simmered. Then I cut up a big fat carrot, diced it well and put it in a small saucepan with more lemon olive oil and just covered with water to cook through, you see I forgot to add it to the other veggies. I added in six spinach balls, here in Dubai our frozen spinach is formed in the size of tater tots...then I added in Poultry Seasoning, salt and pepper, and garlic powder. You see you need all that garlic to get better...haha....then I decided I would add the juice of half a lemon and six cans of chicken broth and then four little round bunches of tagliatelle, and I crunched those up as I added them. Well then I decided I might like to add some cannellini beans, well the ones you get here in the can still seem to be a bit crunchy so I've got them boiling away while my soup is cooking, I'll add them in a little bit. I think that's all....I did a simple taste test...wow, pretty good with that lemon, now I can't wait until everything is all cooked together. I think I've decided to serve that for dinner. I'll also make an egg salad, bacon and basil sandwich, on toasted seeded bread. Yum, sounds good to me. Now, let's see, what did I do with that extra half a lemon, oh yes....I made myself a lemon tea....bring your water kettle to the boil, squeeze the lemon into a cup, add a spoon of honey then the hot water, stir and drink...soothing drink and supposedly Lemon cleans out your system, well let's hope so. Ahhhhh......maybe this will make me feel better fast.
Now if I can get myself really moving I want to try my hand at Malva Pudding. You can easily find it on the internet, my recipe came from Food.com. My stitch group went out for lunch last week too, but it was just lunch, no shopping but we went to Festival City Mall which is also huge and it was quite a trek to get to the restaurant, oh what was the name of it? oh yes Spurs, it's South African I believe......it was someone's birthday so we celebrated with Malva Pudding. It must be the best thing I've ever eaten in the desert category.
Oh I am not such a genius, while I sat right here by the stove and typed, my beans ran out of water before I noticed, well that takes me to Life Lesson #7. Buy really good pans. Mine are Jamie Oliver and I adore them, unfortunately they are quite difficult to find in the states, but never mind that I have purchased them here. Well here's what I did, I salvaged the top layer of beans, well yes, they do taste just a tiny bit smokey but they're fine, I did a taste test, then I put my little Jamie Oliver sauce pan to soak in hot water, I will give it twenty minutes to do that then all I have to do is scrape those beans out that got stuck in the brown/black goo and use my trusty little stainless steel scrubber and that wonderful pan will be good as new in less than five minutes, no kidding, I've burnt stuff before on these wonderful pans and they have always come clean as a whistle. I can remember way back when...I've been known to toss a heavily scorched pan.
......if you're out there Jamie, I do love your pans! Now my soup has that sort of smokey what on earth did you burn smell, but the taste is still good...now to cover it all up and get out my Lysol Linen scented spray and hopefully Tom will be none the wiser to my spoilt beans! I wonder sometimes if Martha Stewart or Julia Child ever burnt something onto their pans?
You see after about 10 minutes soaking in the hot water, I scrape this to one side so you can see how easily Jamie's pans come clean...and now I've had my bowl of soup, I'm still sneezing and sniffling of course but have had good nourishing stuff and I've made a pot full so that will be dinner as well my lunch tomorrow and after that whatever is leftover I think I will freeze for another lunch.
Now Life Lesson # 8 is extremely important, taught to me by my dear most of the time sweet husband...he says "Expect nothing, then you're not disappointed". I did make a huge booboo today by burning my beans and as I dumped the "good" ones into my soup pot I did wonder if I was ruining the whole pot, though I couldn't stop myself from dumping them in, I didn't expect anything and thus my soup is delicious!
