Here's my quick-n-easy & healthy homemade chicken soup: 1 lb chicken breast, 4 c. water - put that in a stock pot or large sauce pan. Add a couple of bouillon cubes or spoonsful of "Better Than Bouillon" concentrate (small jars on the grocery shelf next to the bouillon), sage or poultry seasoning, garlic, onion powder or dried minced onion, pepper, any other seasoning that smells good to me that day, pinch of cinnamon (no seriously, this is necessary, it creates an incomparable richness, I got it from my Mennonite Community Cookbook). When the chicken is cooked, I pull it out and cut it into small bite-sized pieces. Put that back in the pot, add 3-4 (or more, and include the leaves) chopped stalks of celery, throw in a bag of frozen mixed veggies and a half a bag of okra, plus a bag of any other veggies you want, or a couple cans of green beans, cook till the veggies are tender. When I feel like taking more time over it, I sautee an onion with the celery before tossing it into the pot, and slice up fresh carrots instead of relying on the carrots from the mixed veg. From there, it's easy enough to add some leftover rice, or some noodles, or make dumplings. Or just eat it with crackers. Of course, for one person, you'll end up eating off this pot of soup for a week. If you don't want that much leftover, try making this with a couple chicken breast tenders, and halve everything else.

I make my own stock, but the current knowledge from Serious Eats and Cooks Illustrated (my food bibles) seems to be that the Better than Bullion concentrated paste is a better option than other store bought stocks. Their praise has been quite effusive in fact, for all varieties. Just mix with water as instructed on the jar to create broth.

My favorite quick and easy chicken soup is Cooking Lights chicken orzo soup. [link] 20 minutes start to finish and delicious.

Re:credit. You can get a free credit report once a year by law. Google should help you find the link; make sure you find the official truly free one not one that secretly signs you up for a monthly service. Also, if you create an account on mint.com it will allow you to check your credit score monthly.

I think Connie means soup stock, in which case I like Swanson's low sodium over most generic brands, although in my own cooking I tend to just use the TJs concentrated chicken broth, which I water down to 2 cu to one package instead of 1:1.

Same!

I've generally been disappointed in making my own broth for actual brothy soup (I somehow get the mix of flavors wrong, or I'm just too used to canned), but I still enjoy it as a cheap/competent thing.

I'll have to try Better that Bouillon, but my favorite boxed stock by far is Kitchen Basics (unsalted).

Oh! Anybody who wants to learn how to make soup stock from scratch, this book [link] Cooking With Scraps can teach you how. If you do Kindle, I can loan it to you.

Wakey

I had a dream that the characters from Empire were on the Great British Bake-off. Unfortunately I don't remember too much about it except waking up, thinking I needed to tell the Buffistas, and going back to sleep.

Here's my chicken soup recipe. Buy a three-pack of boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Cook one for dinner however you like. Season the other two with salt, pepper, and dried thyme. Drop a bit of olive oil on top and bake for an hour at 350F. Chop into bite sized pieces. Chop one medium onion, two stalks of celery, and two peeled carrots. Sauté the veggies in olive oil over medium heat with just a dash of salt. When the onions are translucent add the chicken and stir. Add a quart of Swanson's chicken broth and a glug or two of dry white wine. Add another shake of thyme. Bring to a boil and then simmer for two hours. Add noodles or wild rice or whatever and continue cooking according to the package directions. Taste at the end and add more seasoning if needed.

Man, you can tell it's going to be a long day when I'm already typing notes to authors like "This is not our journal's style you special fucking snowflake, and if you read our author guidelines or even one article in the journal you would know that you ridiculous demandy jerk!"

(Note: I do not actually send these notes to the author; I send things like "It is journal style to use the term [blah] instead of [foo]; therefore, [blah] will be retained throughout.")

This is the special snowflake who Bartleby-the-Scrivenered me last week by refusing to return her article on time and informing me of when she would choose to return it, so I really shouldn't be surprised she's pushing back on every single one of her precious baby words. Ass.

This is the special snowflake who Bartleby-the-Scrivenered me last week by refusing to return her article on time and informing me of when she would choose to return it

I bet there's an online club for Bartleby-the-Scriveners where they get together and discuss the Scrivenering they accomplish each day.

"And then I told her wouldn't be returning the document on its due date. Guess what I told her then. Guess. I told her I'd be returning the document on a day different from the due date--and that day was also after the due date!"