Hodge podge - Jacque style

Soo I'm a big believer in using the left overs...no matter what they are!  I came home from work a little bit early one afternoon this week and even though I had a work party to go to and wouldn't be eating dinner at the house. I was sick of opening the fridge and seeing lots and lots of food! (now see, this is twisted thinking because generally that's a good thing.)  But I like to USE the food in the fridge ya know?  So I made a hodge podge soup - that was based off of Giada's lemon chicken soup in the sense that it had lemon and chicken and was soup...but that's where I went off on my own.

I started out with 6 cups of  chicken broth (low-sodium would be preferable, but we didn't have it) and the juice of like 2 - 3 lemons...I think i just kept adding it till I could smell something besides chicken stock.  Then a bay leaf - because it was soup and I know there are certain logistics to these things.

The left-overs in the fridge were mostly lots of carrots, celery and onions (not really sure why there was such an abundance - but I'll take it!)  So I chopped up half a large yellow onion (tears streaming of course), a bunch of little snack size carrots, and whatever was in the little snack bag of celery :)  (see picture below)

Ok lets be honest... I did remember that my dad would be having some of this so I left a few of the celery sticks out just to feel better about it.  You know, because crunchy stuff is bad :)

Dump it in!  Let them tenderize - about 6-8 minutes

Now the chicken - cheap style.  Those cans of chicken my mom buys for food storage?  Yup, the laziest and quickest chicken in town.  Sooo all you gotta do is drain that delicious stuff, shred it a little with a dinner fork, and season it however the heck ya want.  Mine received some paprika, salt, and pepper.  I kept it simple - this was hodge podge soup of course...fanciness not allowed! 

Dump it in!  Just heat it through a little. 

I'm hugely addicted to pasta and Giada had some in her soup - so I went to the pantry for the box of spaghetti I knew was open but never going to be used because of it's small portion left over (I may or may not have a habit of organizing the pantry when I need a stress-reliever.  Don't judge.)  About two cups of whatever pasta you want - I like the spaghetti type - Savannah said butterfly woulda been better.  Whatever!

And voila!  You put a lid over it and be on your merry way!  Then all the people who trickle in at different times during the night can go to the pot, load up on dinner, and retreat into their respected rooms to continue workin' on whatever they're busy with!

This was about 5 servings of soup
It got good reviews from the family too!  Even dad liked the flavor :)