Pneumonia and Chicken Soup

So sorry for the radio silence.  I am still getting use to the idea that I have a blog...that maybe someone reads...that I should consider updating. Anyway,  most of what has been pulling me away from the keyboard has been Greg's nasty case of pneumonia.  Technically, only "walking" pneumonia, but it has been a fun round of antibiotics, tea and chicken soup.  He's definitely out of the weeds, now, which is great, but it's slow going.  Being sick poses a few challenges when you're trying to live on a short budget.  Doctors visits and medicines are nastily expensive, but ABSOLUTELY necessary.  Tea, cough drops and Kleenex are also necessary, but man oh man, has our CVS bill been through the roof this month. All money well spent if it means getting healthier faster, but it really does start to add up.

I have been furiously cooking any all warming foods I could thing of.  We've had at least 5 types of soup in the past week, aided by homemade chicken stock.  At $1.89 a pound, I bought a 3 pound chicken at Eastern Market last weekend.  We roasted it with potatoes, carrots and turnips, covered it it lemon, oil and salt and had a grand old feast.  With the left over meat I made chicken tacos the next night (which also got us lunch the following day).  With the picked over chicken carcass, we made about 12 cups of beautiful, flavorful chicken stock.  I have a couple jars in the fridge and the rest in the freezer to be pulled out when needed.  So, for under $6 we had protein for 3 meals and enough stock for at least 2 big batches of soup. Brilliant! 

mmm! chicken tacos taste even better after days of soup!

This post is low on the details of how the plan is going,  more about getting into the swing of posting.  As the end of January roles around, we'll give a good summary of who, what, when, why, how, etc.