A Twist On Chicken And Rice Soup

All three of my little people are not feeling the best.  And as luck would have it, I'm not either.  Allergies, cold, whatever it is, it's no fun.  When 2 of 3 asked me to make her soup today for lunch I was eager to oblige.  Using the lovely Vitamix food processor my mom gave me as an early Christmas present made it a snap!  The onion and celery was chopped in about 5 seconds.  And I didn't need to wear sunglasses to prevent any tears from chopping the onion either!  And yes, I really have done that.  WOOOO HOOOO!!!  I put 2 chicken breast in water with Better Than Bouillion organic chicken base.  Have you ever heard of this product?  Fabulous.  That is about all I have to say.  http://www.superiortouch.com/retail/products/better-than-bouillon

While the chicken was cooking I chopped the carrots in the blender in about 10 seconds!!!  I am just giddy about the Vitamix!  Here is a link if you want to check it out yourself.  https://secure.vitamix.com/acb/stores/4/?COUPON=&store=1   Then added them to the soup.  As you may remember from an earlier post, I'm not the best at cooking rice and having it come out tender.  So I bought frozen organic brown rice.  I popped it into the microwave and 3 minutes later it was done!!!  I know, I really want to wean myself off of the microwave too.  I'm just not there yet.  Baby steps.

2 of 3 and 3 of 3 were thrilled with soup for lunch.  1 of 3 not so much.  She ate the chicken.  I wanted a bit more substance to my soup so I decided to experiment.  I sauted 4 baby portabella mushrooms and swiss chard then added it to my bowl of soup.  It was so tasty.

So this winter if you find yourself feeling a bit under the weather try adding mushroom and swiss chard to your soup.  It makes for a tasty, hearty addition.  I think I'm going to have it again for dinner.

Note:  I just did a quick bit of research to find out the nutritional value of swiss chard and learned something.  Chard is best boiled as the acid is pulled out into the water leaving behind a sweeter tasting chard.  The site mentioned to discard the water used in boiling as it has a high acid content.  As far as nutritional value goes, chard is "one of the most nutritious vegetables around and ranks second only to spinach following our analysis of the total nutrient-richness of the World's Healthiest vegetables."  http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=16