OMG It's Almost Chicken Soup

My refrigerator has been acting funny. The freezer wasn’t freezing but the inside shelves were -- so I had frozen cucumbers, tomatoes and onions and frozen juices etc.

After setting adjustments and a few salvage attempts, I decided to see if the frozen cucumber would work in soup along with some other leftovers.

I had no clue as to whether it would turn out.

I added enough water to a pan to cover the bag of pasta with about 2 more inches.

Then, I added leftover chicken broth and 1/2 a vegetable bouillon.

Then I sliced up the previous frozen cucumber, carrot, and onion.

Decide to try the spice Thyme. So, I crushed about a half a teaspoon of thyme between my palms and added it to the soup mix.

Added about 5 peppercorns.

I battled with the electric stove top for about 2o minutes looking for simmer but getting either a rapid boil or vaguely warm. Eventually, settled on a slow boil.

But, as time when on, the pasta sucked up most of the water, so I eventually added about 6 more cups of water because I really wanted a soup.

At 11:00 I got a simmer.

At 12:00 I tried soup.

While it tasted good, the noodles were getting soft and still very little soup. I could have added more Thyme and peppercorns. So now I have this huge batch of almost soup with soggy noodles. The frozen cucumbers worked well. Let’s see how this freezes and how it tastes when reheated and tweaked.

What I wanted was a soup that I could use for leftovers. This one will work, I just have to adjust two cooking times. First, one for the vegetables to soften them; two, for the pasta, add in the last 10 minutes of cooking time. Eons ago, in the distant past, when I made a soup, I thought I cooked it for over an hour. Hmm, sounds like I need to do more research.

Lessons Learned:

Add noodles 10 minutes before soup is done cooking.

Add more Thyme and peppercorns.

Don’t need to cook soup for an hour.

Fell in love with peppercorns and Thyme.

Chicken (flavored) with Leftovers Soup

Water

1 1/2 cups Chicken Broth

1/2 Bouillon cube, vegetable

1 cucumber sliced

1 carrot, sliced

1/2 red onion, sliced

1 small bag pasta

1 teaspoon thyme

10-15 black peppercorns

Add about 8 cups of water to a large pan.

Add broth and bouillon cube.

Stir.

Add sliced vegetables.

Add spices and stir.

Cook for about 10 minutes on medium-high on simmer to soften vegetables.

Add pasta.

Cook on high for another 10 minutes.

Check water level, add more water if necessary.

Note: add more vegetables if desired.

Will need to retest this recipe in a few months. I have enough soup to last quite a while.