Here’s something I’m disproportionately proud of to start the week: I made some seriously kickass chicken soup.

M., the man with whom I cohabit, did something he ain’t never done before since I’ve known him. He packed a lunch for work with said kickass soup. Then he shared with his co-workers, who are now seeking a recipe, so I’ll do the best I can to write it all out.

It’s recipe time boys and girls!

First, days before you make the soup, whip up this recipe from Farm Fresh to You.

Butternut Squash & Swiss Chard Hash
Ingredients
• olive oil
• 1/2 large onion, thinly sliced
• 1 jalapeno, finely chopped
• 1 small, yellow bell pepper, chopped in 1/2-inch pieces
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• 1/2 tsp smoked paprika
• 1 cup butternut squash, cut into 1-inch cubes and roasted
• 1 cup shredded swiss chard, kale or spinach
• salt & pepper
• 2 eggs poached, fried or soft-boiled. Runny yolk recommended.

Instructions
1. To roast butternut squash: Heat oven to 400 degrees F and place cubes on an oiled baking tray. Bake for 20-30 minutes until tender and slightly golden.

2. Heat olive oil in a large skillet over a medium high heat. Add onion and cook, stirring for about 5 minutes until soft. Add jalapeño, yellow pepper, cumin and paprika and cook for another 2 minutes. Stir in Swiss chard and cook for 2 minutes until wilted. Add roasted squash and cook for another minute. Remove from heat.

3. Season with salt and pepper and serve warm with a poached egg on top.
Serves 2
http://voraciousvander.com
Serves: 2

Oh, but don’t do the egg bit. Just use the veggies as a side dish, sans eggy-wegg. Have leftovers.

Cook up a seriously tasty chicken dinner the next night. Maybe use one of Trader Joe’s pretty tasty “Organic brined chickens.” I roasted that puppy up on a bed of leeks with a few slices of red pepper also thrown into the pan.

Eat the chicken. Save the ravaged corpse.

When the weekend comes along, time to boil up your bones and make a broth.

Here’s the tricky part — First, juice a whole bunch of tangerines, while your loved one watches. Let him leave the house to go for a run.

While he’s out, switch out the tangerines from the juicer, clean up the citrus and switch on over to carrots. When you make carrot juice, you end up with a bucket full of ground up carrot bits. All of the juicing guides tell you, you can make stuff with a bucket full of ground up carrot bits. For example, you can make broth.

So, there you are, a chicken carcass, a bucket full of ground up carrot bits, water and a big pot. Boil that shit. Boil it some more. Let hours pass. Throw in some laundry. Not in the soup, in the washer machine. Do your core exercises, while the pot simmers. Maybe a little knitting, while the pot simmers. Update your craptacular blog, and you guessed, the pot simmers.

You’ll end up hours later with a murky orange goop of soupy base goodness. Time to let it cool, strain it into a bowl and recover any meat that ended up at the bottom of the pot. Throw that into the bowl with the lovely, strained chicken broth.

Slap it in the fridge and go out to eat. Drink wine. Carpe the old diem.

The next day, throw the broth back in a big pot. Put the pan, and a bit more water on the fire getting it back up to a toasty simmer.

Rummage around the refrigerator, and pull out the leftover squash and chard hash from the recipe above. Dump the leftovers into the pot.

Wash and chop up some carrots (the other ones in the pack that you didn’t get around to juicing), and throw the carrot slices into the pot.

Check the crisper in the refrigerator, and discover a bunch of neglected spinach. Clean that up, throw out the leaves of no return, chop or rip it up, and throw that into the pot.

Throw out the beets behind the spinach. They’re wilted and soft anyway, and only in Moscow do you want beets in your soup. This is California, not the Soviet Union. Bad beets. Bye bye beets.

Sit on the couch and let that stuff chill on simmer. OK, not chill exactly. Relax on simmer.

When you finish your core exercises, go back to the pot and grind in a serious helping of fresh pepper. Look around for what other soupy type spices you might have. Hmmm, just in case, throw in a chicken bouillon cube and a bit more water.

Discover the unopened spice mix you got as a Christmas present and check the label. If it says something like “celery salt, garlic salt, pepper and sea salt mixed,” throw some of that junk in. Toss in a little dried rosemary. The old parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. Although, probably not the sage.

Back to the fridge — take out the giant jar of minced garlic in oil, and throw a metric shit ton into the pot. Or at least two heaping tablespoon’s worth.

Let that boil a long while longer. Throw in more water if it starts getting low, and check the carrots. If eyes are the windows on the soul, carrots are the windows on your soup’s doneness. Soft carrots equal done soup.

While this all is boiling, fight off the local critics and naysayers who question your simmer. Simmer is good.

Finally, when you’re hungry, declare the soup is done and force all in the house to eat. Or else.

Oh, and it doesn’t hurt to throw in some breast meat from a brand new chicken just to give it some more meat.

Enjoy.