When the Day Sucks ... Make Soup

This week was a hard one on me and subsequently, our family. Things have changed quite a bit at work, making my schedule very hectic and very stressful. Fortunately, I work from home. Unfortunately, I work from home. So my family felt the pressure and stress right along with me.

Friday was a particularly difficult day. I had stayed up until 2AM the night before working under a tight deadline. The next morning, we found out that the babysitter was up the previous night with the stomach flu (we're happy to report that she is doing much better). I had a major deadline and tried to keep up with phone calls, spreadsheets and mind-boggling details while trying to corral my toddlers and being sleep-deprived to boot.

After a few breakdowns, we decided to get some doughnuts. Because, what else can you do when you're completely frazzled but go have a doughnut? With chocolate ganache? Then when we pulled into the library to rent a Pingu movie, we saw that they were closed for a furlough day. Urg. Much crying in the back of the car.

We all went stir-crazy, the littlest one fell down the wood stairs and I shut off my computer and hunkered down. Not knowing what to do with all the tears and frustration (all three of us), and the fact that we had nowhere to go, I decided we should make some soup.

I LOVE homemade chicken soup. I went to our freezer and got out a bunch of thighs, wings and drumsticks and went to work. The kids supervised, dumped in the chopped veggies as they were finished, measured out the spices, poured in the stock and started to perk up a bit. So did I.


While our soup was simmering, I got out this beloved cookbook:

We regularly watch Lidia Bastianich on our public television station and her show is it. I have done more recipes from Ms. Lidia than I ever would from a Food Network star. Sorry FN, I really like you, but this lady rocks.


One of my favorite things to make are her noodles with the three eggs (she rates her noodles in richness due to the amount of eggs). They are the perfect texture and taste for almost any dish. We just rolled out our dough, cut it into strips and put them in the soup about 10 minutes before serving.


The noodles were kind of thick, so you really don't need any fancy dough rollers. Just a good rolling pin and some muscle. The pizza cutter makes short work of cutting out all those strips. Upon reflection, I think I would have made these strips even smaller as they really puffed up in the soup.

So, when daddy finally got home and we had our soup, our day slowly started getting better.

On the path...