Tonight's potluck

In the refrigerator, there was leftover chicken, a couple turkey drumsticks, some celery, carrots, and some onion.

Sounds like a noodle soup waiting to happen.

So I put it in a large pot, added some water, some of that lovely chicken base (essentially evaporated / concentrated chicken stock), quartered an onion, cut up a few carrots, grabbed all the celery leaves and a couple of ribs and cut them up, and added bay leaves, parsley, italian seasoning, freshly ground pepper, and some of that light salt (hey, gotta control the salt around here). The turkey drumsticks and leftover chicken pieces are also simmering merrily.

Around lunch time or so (maybe earlier) I will cool it and take out any good pieces of meat, and put the broth in a large container and put it in the fridge. I'll come back after the school run and skim off the fat, and add some cut up carrots and celery, and diced onion, and I think a little lemon juice (which seems to be prevalent in most chicken soup recipes I've run across). Then, of course, the noodles.

Whether I like it or not I need to make a whole bunch of spanish rice too. When I asked my next door neighbor vendor at the market for some organic tomatoes and handed him some money, he brought me a huge box of tomatoes. Way more than I paid for. We're doing taco night at the homeless shelter next week, so I volunteered for the rice and beans.

To go with the spanish rice maybe I'll make some borracho beans. I have some lovely borracho bean seasoning direct from Texas, and I think I'll just take some canned beans, rinse them well, and add some of that seasoning and maybe a little beef broth. I have a nifty looking three bean organic bean blend that would look nice, along with some black beans smooshed up a bit. Cheese of course will make it more interesting to folks...so maybe I'll do that.

I have some lovely poblano peppers from another organic grower at the market and I can see them living quite happily in the rice, and in that chile relleno casserole I make (just click "recipes" and you'll see the post with that delicious and cheap recipe).