Chicken Soup from Food Storage

For the past several days my family has been passing the flu around in a major way.  My almost 21 month-old started throwing up on Wednesday night at about 11PM.  (It always happens right as I'm going to bed)   I was up with him until after 6AM and when he finally went down in his crib.  On Friday night, right at about 11PM (of course) my 4 year-old came rushing out of her bedroom and unfortunately didn't make it to the toilet in time to throw up.  I'm sure you are all really enjoying this story by now. :)  So, she was up throwing up pretty often--like every 15-20 minutes until about 8:30AM.  Ahh, another restful night. Ha ha.  I thought we were good after that, but Sunday night, my 6 year-old came in my bedroom (about 11:30PM) and started throwing up.  Right about that time, I had thrown-up, too, and was not feeling well.  Anyway, my daughter was throwing up fairly often until about 7:30AM.  I had gotten up to get my 7 year-old off to school when my 4 year-old (yes the same one I spoke of earlier) started throwing up.  Sigh.  So, for most of today, me and my girls (4 and 6) were lying on the couch with bowls nearby and sippy cups of water and Powerade (I know that stuff is horrible. . . HFCS is the second ingredient--ugh. . . I had some leftover from my couponing days and they wanted some) watching movies like Enchanted, Cinderella, and The Little Mermaid.  Luckily, my husband was able to stay home and chase after our 21 month-old son who is in that lovely get-into-everything stage.

So, now on to my point.  I really felt like a nice bowl of chicken noodle soup.  My husband gets after me because I never use a recipe and it always turns out different.  I was still feeling sick and didn't feel like chopping a bunch of veggies to put in my soup.  So, here's what I did:

Chicken Noodle Soup (all from my pantry)

4 cans of Swanson's low sodium chicken broth

1 can of chicken (that I canned myself here)

1 cup of dehydrated carrots (which I dehydrated and vacuum sealed myself)

1/2 cup of dehydrated celery (this came from a #10 can, but I have dehydrated it myself in the past)

1 cup of corn (I actually used corn that I had frozen last summer, but I do have some dehydrated corn on my shelf that I did here)

1/2 cup pearled barley (a great comfort food when sick)

2-3 tablespoons of my dried onion soup mix made here)

I let this cook in my digital pressure cooker (one of the greatest inventions) for 10 minutes.  Then I opened it up and added in a handful of whole grain noodles and just let them sit in there until soft.    Then I added some salt and pepper and tada!  

Sorry there are no pictures.  I wasn't thinking about posting this until about 10 minutes ago and dinner is all put away for the night .  My soup was a little thick, my husband called it chicken noodle stew, but I liked it.  It had a little different taste to it and I think that was because of using my homemade dry onion soup mix instead of just plain onions.  

So, we had a nice quick, healthy easy dinner that was great for a family still getting over the sickies!  (My husband isn't feeling to great tonight and our 7 year old is the only one to escape it so far).  

I hope you all (and me included!) have a good night's sleep tonight and maybe enjoy a nice bowl of chicken soup sometime.   

Pin It

Q & A

I love getting comments on my blog. . . it really motivates and inspires me to do more, so thank you for your comments.  There was a question about what to do with leftover Halloween candy.  I have a few recommendations:

First, much of your hard candy (i.e. Jolly Ranchers, suckers, anything hard) you can actually dry pack can into #10 cans, if you have that available to you.  In my ward at church, we dry pack can each month, and you can bring your own food to can.   We put an oxygen absorber in the can, then fill it with the food, put the lid on and seal it with a #10 can sealer.

Second, you can vacuum seal it with a Food Saver, or other brand sealer.  I have a post here where I have vacuum sealed granola and wheat nuts.  You can totally vacuum seal candy--even chocolate!  Although, if it is for long term storage, I would put it in a box labeled "Broccoli" or something like that. :)  If you want to seal up something in smaller packages like mini candy bars, or packages of M&M's, then take a straight pin and poke a couple holes in the packaging so that the oxygen can be sucked out of the inside of the wrapper.  I love vacuum sealing, because you can preserve food that would otherwise go rancid quickly, like brown sugar, brown rice, and nuts.

Last, if you don't have either of those methods available, you can simply store it in a glass jar.  Plastic is okay, if it is PETE plastic, but glass if preferable.  You may put in an oxygen absorber if you really want to.  But, hard candy would probably be fine for a long time just in a jar.

Now, I am not an expert on the best way to store candy, but this is what I would do (and probably should because we have WAY too much candy around here right now!).

Thank you, Christina, for your question!

Have you tried this?

So, after the preparedness fair (see previous post), I had a few leftover wheat nuts and some granola that I wanted to save. I used this vacuum sealing method to vacuum pack my food into quart size canning jars. It is awesome! You can seal and save so many foods that you cannot preserve otherwise (wet pack canning, dry pack canning, etc.). Foods like brown rice, raisins, chocolate, nuts and things that normally go rancid will stay good for years sealed in a jar.


So, me and my little helpers went to work. Kayla (2 years old) was busy filling up my jars.


Lily (4 years old) put on the lid (just the flat lid, not the ring) and then the handy sealing top that you see connected by a tube to my food sealer (it's just a generic version of a Food Saver).

I worked the sealer and here you go-- granola and wheat nuts sealed in jars ready to be stored for a long long time.

The girls and I were having so much fun that we ended up sealing a few jars of chocolate chips and craisins while we were at it. It is addicting! I am excited to start sealing up more food!