Well, it’s what was for dinner earlier this week. Mr. zella was down with a cold earlier this week. Luckily for him homemade chicken soup was on the menu. I’m still on a huge Mother’s Best kick right now, so I tried Lisa’s recipe for her mother’s homemade chicken soup.
I started out by simmering the broth for about 3 1/2 hours. There are two whole chickens, one onion, three or four carrots, four stalks of celery, four parsnips and a bunch of Italian parsley in the pot along with about 8 quarts of water. This recipe makes a lot of soup.

Nearly half a day later I strained out the very mushy vegetables, shredded the chicken and added it back to the broth along with some minced carrots and celery, cooked egg noodles and good dose of salt and pepper.

The soup seems to have done its job. Mr. zella is fully recovered and is accompanying the girls at a princess-themed birthday party at this very moment. He drew birthday party duty because I am on the couch with a mug of tea and the beginnings of a nasty cold.
Maybe it’s time to make more soup.
I’m slacking off for a few minutes. I’m hiding from my to-do list and averting my eyes from the laundry pile. Instead of being industrious I decided to take a few minutes to post another picture of Wisteria.
click for larger image
Wisteria has been growing, growing, growing, as my five-year-olds would say. I just wish that it would grow a bit more quickly. I would really like to have it done by a week from today, and based on my current rate of production that doesn’t look likely.
It’s a Monday, which by definition means that I am already behind in what I need to get done for the week. This week’s to-do list includes phrases like “Kindergarten applications”, “rotate tires, “call electrician” and, shudder, “tax prep”. And there are two doctor’s appointments, one for me and one for the girls, thrown in for good measure. As a result this week’s menus is pretty dull, so I’m going to skip posting it this week.
On a more positive note, I am making progress on Wisteria. According to my calculations I’m just shy of 25% done (24.7% to be precise). I think it’s looking pretty good so far.

If I stay on task I should be able to finish it before Madrona. If not, I may need to borrow someone else’s knitting to cut up.
According to my clock I have just enough time to walk the ungrateful hounds before I need to pick up the girls. If I do that I can avoid the other icky things on my to-do list for a few more hours AND get some exercise. Sounds like a winning combination to me.
I think that I should absolutely knit the Corgis one or two of these (scroll down for Corgi content). You know, in my free time. What do you think?