You may use fresh or frozen veggies for this recipe. Fresh is always better but bags of frozen veggies are sometimes easier to keep around.

Ingredient:

• 1 whole chicken breast
• 1/2 cup carrots
• 1/2 medium onion
• 2 small stalks celery
• 1/2 cup peas
• 1/2 cup diced tomatoes
• 2 teaspoon salt
• 1teaspoon chicken bouillon
• 6 cups water

1. Boil chicken breast in water, salt, and bouillon, until tender. (about 20 minutes)
2. Remove chicken breast and add remaining ingredients to boiling broth.
3. Cut chicken breast into chunks and replace in pot with veggies.
4. Simmer for 30 minutes and serve hot.

Serves 2 hearty bowls of soup.

Options:

Add 1 whole potato or pasta. These starchy additions will make your broth a little cloudy but if you are not worried about the looks of it and want to add some bulk, either are a tasty addition. Increase salt by a pinch. When adding additional ingredients.


After my boys left home I had a hard time cutting back on the amounts of food I cooked. When they lived at home I boiled a whole chicken for a pot of chicken soup and went through veggies with enough frequency that keeping fresh ingredients in the house was not a problem.

Now that I am frequently cooking for just 1 or 2, I don't want to make so much at a time and figured this recipe when learning to cut back.

The chicken breasts are easily kept in the freezer. I get them in a bag, individually frozen. It's easy for me to pull out just 1 or 2 for a meal.

Veggies are also more easily kept in the freezer. I don't have to worry about them going bad in the crisper when I don't use them fast enough.

Everything in this recipe started frozen except for the celery and tomato. Celery actually keeps a good while in the fridge and the tomatoes were left over from a can I had used in a recipe over the weekend.

A little about soup:

Soup is noted as a food dish for as far back as anyone knows. People from all cultures, all ages, and all income groups have been eaters of soups since the beginning of time.

Soup is nutritious, filling, easily digested, and easy to prepare and serve. And because all the ingredients in soup can be dehydrated, soup made a fabulous meal on the go for early settlers as it was easy to reconstitute all the ingredients with just water.

Before the invention of refrigeration, soup ingredients were dried, canned, and kept in root cellars and smoke houses. They were easily accessible to almost everyone and were inexpensive ingredients.

Soup requires making little mess using only 1 pot and utensils and it cleans up just as easily as it's made. This makes it a common food item in most households.

Soup is a fantastic way to make a simple, one pot, no mess meal. and can be prepared quickly enough to accommodate some last minute guest. Recipes are bulked up or scaled down easily.

Variations on recipes like additions of a variety of vegetables, pastas, and grains can add hearty and robust tones to an already complete meal. One can quite easily include all members of the food group in one serving of soup.
 

Most of all soup tastes good and it's good for you. The fact that it's such a simple food just makes it all the better.