My Life: Childhood Favorite

This past weekend our team had its first season game. However, due to the inability to retain my work visa I was not able to participate in the game. I was there however on the bench doing as much as I could to help my team win. In the end we fell short by 1 point. It was a big turn of events the last 30 seconds of the game. We were up by 3 and managed to panic those points away. Our team learned a lot from that I hope, and hopefully we wont make the mistake again! As for me, I am hoping to be able to play by our next game but its looking more like 2 weeks before I can play. It will work out in the end though! As always we get the next day off completely, leaving me Sunday to myself!

Sunday was suppose to be a cooler day than what we had been having, so in advance I planned to make one of my childhood favorites- Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup! When I woke up Sunday, the weatherman did not disappoint me! Weather was perfect for a day at home and making my soup. However I double checked my ingredients first thing that morning (grocery store closed at noon) and its a good thing I checked because I was missing a pretty key ingredient, celery! I had 45 minutes to walk to the grocery store which isn't a problem because I'm only 15 minutes by foot! Returned from the store, had myself lunch, sat down to look at recipe and it looked FOREIGN! Yes I am in France but this was written in ENGLISH by my mother! When she wrote it for me she wrote it like I knew what I was doing, like I have made it before. I was stuck! No one to help me either because it was only 4:30am back at home. I tried looking on websites but all had different ingredients than what I had wrote down in front of me so I just decided to wait until someone woke back up in the states. Thankfully about 2 hours later or so my brother Darrin and his wife Lynn were awake and on Skype (we have an annual Skype in morning now :) which I love!). After talking for a little while I finally asked for help on this recipe, good thing Lynn is basically a Chef for me and knew exactly what I needed to do! She really needed to stupefy it for me because when she first started talking I looked like she was speaking a foreign language. People that dont know me, I'm just starting to cook broader foods! Anyways, I finally understood what was going on! I continued talking with my bro and sis in law for a little while longer and than we said our good byes and it was time for me too start cooking! First part was a cinch, throw the water, veggies and chicken in a pot and let cook for about 45 minutes! Hard work part came next, emptying out these veggies so i had the broth itself! After that was done I started the second part with new veggies. I realized the veggies wouldn't take as long as making my noodles, so I put them on hold and started with the noodles. That part got a tad tricky for my dough was a little dry in the end. No worries though Lynn was available to help me out. Guess what she said? "Umm I dont know, maybe add another teaspoon of water?" Teaspoon of water added would of made 1/4 C of water like my mom said, its just i read somewhere dont make dough too wet so I got scared. In the end all I needed was that teaspoon of water! Dough was done! Now it was time to roll the dough out. I realized I had no rolling pin! My brain kicked in and I found 2 things that worked well enough to get the job done. Thing of salt and than finished it off with a can of beans! Got the veggies going, shredded up the chicken, and than added both the chicken and noodles a little while later! Ended up having to add a little more water and another half of a bouillon cube because the noodles took up a lot of space but in the end it worked out and Voila it was perfect!

It didn't end there, i was craving some warm apples and cinnamon! I quickly peeled and cored the apples, mixed the ingredients and threw them on the stove so I could enjoy them for dessert. They turned out okay but they need some help for next time!

Hope you enjoy this very long post :)!