Avgolemono Soup

Day #6 on protein shake, mashed potatoes and broth diet. Its so discouraging. I feel just fine when I don't eat any solid foods and to be honest, it almost feels even better than usual. However, I miss cooking. I miss trying new foods and recipes and being adventurous. I don't know when I should try something more solid, but I keep remembering last week when a bowl of rice had me in such pain for 3 hours. I don't want to feel like that, but at some point I am going to have to try.

Today was a good day because I saw that my sweet potato risotto recipe was on my favorite food site SeriousEat yesterday. I didn't even see it till today, and was so excited. I had to post another recipe, although the pictures aren't as nice. The funny thing is that picture was rejected by tastespotting.com and foodgawker.com but made it on a much bigger site!

The last thing that I made before I got really sick was avgolemono soup. I have seen different recipes for this soup online and in my soup books but never got around to making it. Then my husband got sick and I wanted to do something different than the traditional chicken noodle (which, unless I found gluten free soup noodles, I couldn't eat). I only got to eat a bowl full because of the lemon and my stomach, but it tasted really good.

Avgolemono Soup

7 cups of chicken broth

1 lb of chicken (I always use boneless, skinless breasts but legs or thighs would do also)

5 eggs

Juice for 4 lemons

1/2 cup of rice

Black pepper to taste

Put the chicken and broth into a sauce pan and bring to a boil. Then turn to low and let simmer, covered, for 30 minutes or more until the chicken is cooked. Remove the chicken and skim off the surface scum. Ladle a 1 cup of the broth into a bowl on the side.

While cooking the chicken, cook the rice and put to the side.

Use a fork to pull the chicken and put back in the broth. Bring the broth back to a boil and simmer for 2 minutes. Then take the pot off of the burner.

In a bowl, whisk the eggs, lemon juice, and pepper. While whisking drizzle in the broth that you had put to the side while beating constantly. Then whisk the egg mixture into the pot of soup, beating constantly. Turn the heat back on to low and stir constantly for around 2 minutes until the soup thickens but do not let the mixture bubble. Add the rice, take off of heat, and it is done.