How to take care of yourself

by making a chicken broth. Not using a spoonful of instant broth with a bit of water, mind you! I am talking about the real deal. A healthy boost from scratch.

I believe a lot in the body being clever enough to show when it's time to put up your feet and take a break. I know it is easy to feel threatened by the slightly itching throat in the morning. You can't afford having a cold now. You've got this important meeting/interview/project/thing coming up. And you need to function.

All the grannies of generations can't be wrong if they started to stir some veggies and chicken in a pot to get you back on track. That's how I see it, too. I understand an itching throat and the imminent cold as the most natural and actually adorable way of my body telling me it's time to lean back a little, dial it down a notch.

And the best thing to do now, besides lounging around on the sofa for a bit, is to support your defence system with some homemade goodness.

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This is a very basic recipe of a selfmade chicken broth.
It takes a little effort. And yes, it takes about 2 to 3 hours.
But good things come to those that wait.

What you need:
- soup greens (2 onions, 3 to 4 carrots, celery, leek)

- some chicken drumsticks, unseasoned of course (I used about 600g)
- peppercorns, allspice, salt (try to use sea salt if you can), 1 or 2 bay leaves
- noodles for soup (I personally like to use letter-noodles - but that's really just for the joy of finding words on my plate)
- butter and oil
- peas (you can use tinned or frozen ones)
- patience

Wash and dry your chicken, peel the leek, onions and 2 carrots (keep one for later), take off the ugly parts of the celery. If rather long, cut leek and carrots in half. But keep the onions as a whole.

Melt some butter and oil in a large pot on a medium high heat, add the chicken drum sticks and keep stirring for about a minute, so the butter won't turn brown.

Now add the greens, peppercorns, allspice, salt and bay leaves.

Cover everything with hot water and leave simmering on low heat.

After the first ten minutes you'll already notice some foam appearing on the surface. Gently skim this off, it will turn your broth a little bitter if you leave it.

Stir every now and then and keep removing the foam for the next hour/hour and a half (the longer it simmers, the more intense your broth will taste later).

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Now it's time to remove all ingredients from your broth.

Pod the chicken and keep all those parts you'd like to see in your soup. I am rather picky and tend to remove a lot of the fat and gristly parts.

Add your chicken meat, some peas and another carrot, cut in small pieces. Depending on your taste, you can always pimp your soup with any other greens, like zucchini for example. Or some more leek as well.

Add your noodles, stir and boil for another moment and finally enjoy with some bread.

Oh, and let me know how you got on should you try this recipe. I'd love to know the little extras you add to your chicken broth.