I am not making a Thanksgiving post because it's not Thanksgiving in Canada!  Sucks, eh?  But we had ours in October so it's not like we miss out completely.  But to keep my mind off feeling homesick I am making a recipe post, at least.

DH is fighting off a cold.  He's not really sick with it, but he's feeling a bit draggy.  So yesterday I was trying to think what I could do to pick him up a little bit, and of course I thought of soup.  He's not a big soup guy, but I figured what the hell!  He had his usual sandwiches waiting for him in the fridge, so if he didn't like the soup, I'd eat it myself and he wouldn't go hungry.  I'd never made chicken soup from scratch before (lentil soup, potato soup, but not chicken).  But I knew that for it to be a true get-better-soup, it had to be homemade!  So I followed my usual method: look up 3 or 4 different recipes on the internet, take the best and most doable parts of each, add my own littlte touches, and make a sort of conglomerate recipe of my own.

I'm posting it here in part to record the recipe I came up with (it got rave reviews - when I suggested that I'd eat his share if he didn't want it, he basically said, "Oh no you don't!") and in part just to share it with anyone here who might be interested in trying it.  You could easily substitute turkey for the chicken and use it as a leftover recipe!

Ingredients:
1 skinless, boneless, but untrimmed chicken breast (about 2lbs of meat iirc)
3 cans condensed chicken broth
4ish cups water
3 carrots, on the large side
2 medium onions
2-3 handfuls dried lentils (optional, you could substitute potatoes, rutabaga, or egg noodles or leave this out completely; I like the nutty flavor and the extra nutrition lentils have)

and the spices...
(approx. measurements since my personal method is "ummm...that looks right!")

1/4 tsp rosemary
1 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp celery salt
1/4 tsp salt (I used sea salt)
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp coriander
2 bay leaves
garlic (I finally splurged on a garlic press and used 3 cloves fresh garlic, but powder would work too)

The procedure

Empty the cans of broth into a large soup pot.  Add 3 cans + 1 cup of water.  Put chicken breast into the pot and bring to boil on high heat.  While that's cooking, cut the carrots (I cut 1/4" rounds and either halved or quartered them depending on how big across they were) and the onions.  Skim the foam off the top of the boiling pot.  Take the chicken out (mine was pretty much cooked by then) and cut it into bite sized pieces, trimming off any fat or gristle, and put it back in the soup.  Add in carrots, onions, lentils, and seasonings.  Reduce heat and simmer.  I let mine cook for maybe 45 minutes, turned it off to leave the house, and reheated it for 15 minutes or so before eating.  But being soup, you can simmer it for an hour, two hours...as long as you want really so long as all the veggies are cooked nice and mushy.  Don't forget to fish the bay leaves out!

This is the kind of dish that is probably best after resting overnight in the fridge, but we ate it straight off the stove and it was delicious!  If you make it without noodles, it's the kind of thing that's great to make in large batches and freeze (the noodles wouldn't freeze well, though - but if you wanted, you could cook the noodles seperately and put them in the soup just before you eat it).  Perfect for those cold winter nights when you want something hot but don't have a lot of energy left for cooking.  Let me know what you think if you try it - I'm really proud of this one!