In the Northern Hemisphere, spring is underway, and summer is just around the corner (which means it’s early fall for my readers in the Southern Hemisphere, right?). Here in Tennessee, the weather is slowly warming up, but our evenings are cool, which means that soup is still an appropriate dinner food. Mr. Handsome isn’t a huge fan of chicken noodle soup because he associates it with being sick. I, on the other hand, love it, but when I do cook it, I usually try to make sure there are some leftovers in the fridge for him.
Mr. Handsome was sure that after my labor and delivery, I would no longer have any desire to eat chicken soup. You can read more about it in my birth story posts, but I was only able to eat clear liquids for 30 hours, and plain chicken stock was one of the few things I could have. I ordered several bowls from the hospital kitchen while I was in labor, and we laughed because it came on a plastic tray with a fancy cover.
Honestly, I think I enjoy chicken soup even more now because I remember how starving I was while in labor and how that stock really hit the spot. And even though my delivery was really difficult (I recently read that drug-induced labor initiates much stronger contractions that are closer together than natural labor, which explains why I had insanely painful contractions with barely any breaks nine hours before my baby was born), I somehow look back on the whole experience with rose-covered glasses.
Now back to the soup. This recipe for chunky chicken noodle soup is from my childhood. It can be ready to enjoy in less than 30 minutes if you use prepared chicken stock. If you buy a rotisserie chicken for dinner the night before, you can make your own chicken stock the next day by boiling the carcass and adding herbs, but this soup tastes great whether you use homemade or store-bought stock. If you really want an easy meal, buy an extra rotisserie chicken and use the meat from that one for the soup….