Turkey and Vegetable Soup
Happy New Year! And Happy Soup Month! That’s right, January is National Soup Month, look it up, google it, it’s true. I have a habit of not making New Year’s resolutions, since I have trouble keeping them, and more importantly I think it’s silly to decide on a “resolution” and stick to it. The past few years, instead of a resolution I made a promise to myself to keep improving myself, and so far that’s worked out really well. I sometimes have to pinch myself to believe how good things are and most importantly how good my attitude is about my life and I know what it took to get here. But this year, I decided – mostly on a whim which is of course how I decide most things – to celebrate all of the holidays on my calendar. Which includes everything from religious holidays, the Fourth of July, Canada Day (and International Joke Day which is unsurprisingly the same day), to things like Milk Day and Strange Music Day and it includes National Soup Month.
I’d been doing some research on soups and noticed that most soups contain at least celery, carrots, a bay leaf, onion, and broth or water. On Friday I made my way to Reading Terminal Market, my favorite grocery store of all, and utilized a grocery list that was fairly small and simple but full of veggies and some fresh poultry. I still had a lot of turkey stock to use so I tried to find a way to use it and frankly I was on a bit of a time crunch when looking at more complex recipes. Start small and work your way up right? You can’t run a marathon on day one unless you’re my dear friend Andy.
New Years Eve proved to me two things…that I have improved as promised but also that life is a constant state of give and take, and sometimes you can’t win them all but you can learn and you’ll get there eventually, especially when you have amazing friends who love you even with your faults, and a few puppies to cuddle every so often (Chachi, such a winning puppy!). I still had to work on the Monday after, when the rest of the world got to have another day for their hangovers and bad decisions, and I was in a mood even though I knew another sleep would be the perfect cure. I got off of work early and headed home in the bitter cold, that will now be known as “the three months of hellish winter why don’t I live in California” and got excited, because I knew what was on the menu.
Turkey and Vegatable Soup! – a recipe from my brain by way of much reading of soup recipes
Ingredients:
- Minced garlic
- Onion
- Bay leaf
- Celery
- Carrots
- Turkey breast
- Turkey Stock
Step 1: Cut up turkey breast (or any other part) into bite sized chunks. Set aside
Step 2: Cut up celery stalk (just one because there’s only one of you here). Mince a few cloves of garlic and cut some onion (use your judgment) and quarter it.
Step 3: Put garlic, onion, and celery into a pot and pour turkey stock over top of it enough to cover the veggies and then some. Set to simmer about five minutes-ish. Meanwhile peel and dice a carrot and pop the chunks into the pot.
Step 4: Add the turkey chunks. Add a bay leaf. Stir.
Step 5: Simmer, stirring occasionally until the veggies are tender and the turkey is cooked. It will probably take you as long as finally cleaning up your kitchen. It will start to smell like dreams and a warm hug.
Step 6: Serve up your soup in a bowl, and let it cool. Approximately as long as you need to clean the pot you used. Enjoy.
Wow. Wow. Wow. Ok, so my Mom used to tell me I use food as “comfort” but SERIOUSLY?!?!?! I can’t entirely explain what happened…I had talked to my Pops before I started cooking and he sounded worried about me because I wasn't so happy, but as soon as I took that first spoonful of soup my mood improved tenfold. Of course looking through Mike and Maggie’s wedding album at the multitudes of dance-offs and happiness helped too. But wow. This foodsperiment gets a +8 for happiness, a +5 for deliciousness, a +5 for such fresh and amazing ingredients!, and +5 for easy clean up. I would only say that tomorrow I’ll add more turkey stock, because there was just a bit less broth than I think a soup would have but wow. My goodness, wow. Happy Soup Month!
Turkey and Veg Soup
Me and an Awesome Puppy!
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