Lenore's Chicken Noodle Soup

I finally made my sister's recipe for chicken stock. It tasted as good as hers!

Lenore's Chicken Soup
Cover a stewing (fowl) chicken with about 4-6 quarts of water. Add celery stalks, whole carrots, & whole onions. (You don't have to peel anything if you wash it well; it just makes the soup darker and you retain more vitamins.) Add salt, pepper, 2 bay leaves, and basil and parsley. Bring to a boil, lower heat and allow to simmer, covered, about 3 hours. Strain & toss vegetables. Bone and dice up chicken. (There is usually a lot and I use some for chicken salad.) (This is a good place to stop if you want to do this in 2 days. You can put the broth in the fridge and take off the fat.) Put the chicken back into the broth with any vegetable you want--carrots, celery, peas. Simmer another hour. If you want to add rice with the vegetables, remember it will absorb some of the broth. You can cook pasta separately and add at the end.

I ended up with 5 ziplock bags each containing 2 cups of chicken broth. And that was after I fixed a pan of soup that we ate last night and tonight. Well worth the time.

In the pan of soup I made I added sauteed onions, carrots, and celery, fresh thyme, frozen spinach and noodles. Delicious!