Sipping Once, Sipping Twice, Sipping Chicken Soup is NICE!

     Have you read the book Chicken Soup With Rice by Maurice Sendak?  It is a family favorite in the Goshert household.  I read most of the page, but at the end of the page my kids pipe in, "Sipping once, sipping twice, sipping chicken soup with rice!"  Usually they are able to implore me to read it "just once more".

     In my post: The Delicious Side of GAPS I talked a little bit about the health benefits GAPS brought to our family.  The simple concept of drinking bone broth can make a huge impact on ones health.  In fact, a person does not even have to be on the GAPS Diet to reap the benefits of bone broth.  When ever I hear a friend or family member mention their family is sick I cannot keep myself from suggesting they make some chicken soup.  I actually grew up with my mother making chicken soup for people who were sick.  Back then, I thought it was a comfort food, and I could not understand why.  In all my historical fiction novels I love to read, the characters are always ladling broth down the throats of the invalid.  I am pretty sure they were not using bouillon cubes.

     Broth is really easy to make; take a bone and boil it in water.  Personally I like to take a whole chicken and boil it in a pot of water for an hour and a half (any longer than that and the meat gets dry).  I add lots of salt and crushed pepper corns, as well.  The oil that comes off the chicken skin makes the broth very tasty.  (When the chicken is finished cooking, you can even remove the skin and lay it out flat on a cookie sheet and broil it for a nice treat that we like to call CHICKEN BACON- add a little salt and garlic for a real treat!)  After I have removed the chew-able parts of the chicken from the bones, I boil the bones and non-chew-able parts of the chicken in the crock pot for an additional 24 hours.  If you did not partake in the chicken bacon, mentioned above, then I would add the skin to the crock pot as well.

     A quick warning if you are going to use beef bones.  Dr. Campbell-McBride says that chicken broth is very soothing to the gut, while other bone broths are more healing.  So, it is good to try other types of bones.  What I found was my family did not like the taste of the beef soup bones (the big thick bones with all the good for you marrow inside them).  Their systems did not respond very well to the very greasy broth either.  We did do pork bones with great success.  I have never tried fish bones or any other poultry, besides turkey.  I have not tried any wild game bones.

     On the GAPS Introduction Diet bone broth is supposed to be available at all times as a drink and to make into soups.  One of my favorite chicken soup recipes is loaded with garlic, onions and peppers to help scare off those cold viruses!

Chicken Soup with Rutabaga 

Things you will need:

1 whole chicken

4 large rutabaga,peeled and diced

1 small cabbage (or a handful of kale leaves), shredded

1 pound of peeled carrots (they taste better when you peel them), chopped or shredded

3 cups of minced onion

1 large red bell pepper, chopped

3 whole heads of garlic, peeled and minced

salt, to taste

pepper corns, crushed, to taste

Directions:

1. Place chicken in soup pot and cover with water.  Add salt and crushed pepper corns.  Boil for about an hour and a half, until chicken is cooked thoroughly.  (I usually start the chicken cooking and then do all my vegetable prep work.)  Remove chicken from pot and set aside to cool.

2. Add all the vegetables to the broth, and bring to a boil.  Cook until all vegetables are tender.

3. While vegetables are cooking remove the meat from the bones of the chicken.  Save the bones and skin for later.  Chop the meat into bite size pieces.  When the vegetables are done cooking, turn off the stove and add chicken (you really do not want to cook the meat any more than you have to, otherwise it gets really dry).

     If you are doing GAPS you may already know how tedious it can be to prep food.  Peeling garlic is one of the most tedious jobs in the kitchen, right up there with washing the pots and pans!  I have seen several tricks to peeling garlic.  My trick it to call in my 6, 8, and 10 year old and ask them to peel garlic.  I have seen people use mortar and pestles to slightly crush the garlic to make it easier to peel.  I have seen a huge man take two giant metal bowls, crush a head of garlic with his bare hand and toss it into one of the bowls- placing the other bowl on top as a lid, and then shake the bowls vigorously.  My mother likes to shake garlic in a glass jar with a metal lid.  I usually like to avoid as many dirty dishes as possible and crack the clove with my fingers, thus breaking the skin, and peel it (or have my kids do it).

     Chopping vegetables is a time consuming task.  I do not know what I would do with out my food processor.  I have changed recipes just so I could use my food processor on all my vegetables (some things do not fit well into food processors, so I will shredded them, or cut them differently so they will fit in).  For kale I will avoid the extra work of shredding by putting it in the food processor with the chopping blade.  I pulse it and get a good result.

     Part of cooking from scratch is just excepting that you are going to be in the kitchen a big chunk of the day.  If you can cook large portions of food you can have left overs, that helps keep dishes down and cooking time down.