Recipe: Chicken and wild rice soup packed with vegetables
For a delicious and healthful spring soup, add cooked wild rice to the pot after the vegetables are tender. Debbie Arrington
Got the spring sniffles? It’s still chicken soup season.
This variation on chicken and rice soup is loaded with antioxidants, great for fighting colds. Filled with vegetables, it’s also a healthy tonic for spring fever.
Use fresh or frozen peas and corn. (Since it’s early spring, fresh peas and frozen corn went into this batch.)
Cooked wild rice adds nutty flavor and texture. (Cooked white or brown rice can be substituted.)
Another plus: This soup freezes well. That way, it’s ready when the next cold strikes.
Chicken and wild rice soup
Makes 6 to 8 servings
Ingredients:
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, chopped
8 cups water
4 chicken bouillon cubes
2 teaspoons poultry seasoning
2 cups cooked chicken, diced
2 carrots, cut into coins
2 stalks celery, diced
½ cups peas (fresh or frozen)
½ cup corn (fresh or frozen)
1 cup cooked wild rice
1 teaspoon seasoning salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
Instructions:
In a large heavy pot, heat olive oil. Sauté chopped onion until soft.
Add water, bouillon cubes and poultry seasoning; bring to boil.
Add chicken, carrots and celery; bring to boil again, then reduce heat to simmer. Cover.
Simmer soup for 20 minutes until carrots and celery are tender. Add peas and corn; simmer for 10 more minutes.
Stir in cooked wild rice, seasoning salt and black pepper. Simmer for 10 more minutes. Adjust seasoning if needed.
Serve hot.
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Garden Checklist for week of April 20
Before possible showers at the end of the week, take advantage of all this nice sunshine – and get to work!
* Set out tomato, pepper and eggplant transplants.
* From seed, plant beans, beets, cantaloupes, carrots, corn, cucumbers, melons, pumpkins, radishes and squash.
* Plant onion sets.
* In the flower garden, plant seeds for asters, cosmos, celosia, marigolds, salvia, sunflowers and zinnias.
* Transplant petunias, zinnias, geraniums and other summer bloomers.
* Plant perennials and dahlia tubers for summer bloom.
* Plant summer bulbs, such as gladiolus and tuberous begonias.
* Transplant lettuce and cabbage seedlings.
* Smell orange blossoms? Feed citrus trees with a low dose of balanced fertilizer (such as 10-10-10) during bloom to help set fruit. Keep an eye out for ants.
* Apply slow-release fertilizer to the lawn.
* Thoroughly clean debris from the bottom of outdoor ponds or fountains.
* Trim dead flowers but not leaves from spring-flowering bulbs such as daffodils and tulips. Those leaves gather energy to create next year's flowers. Also, give the bulbs a fertilizer boost after bloom.
* Spring brings a flush of rapid growth, and that means your garden is really hungry. Give shrubs and trees a dose of a slow-release fertilizer. Or mulch with a 1-inch layer of compost.
* Start thinning fruit that's formed on apple and stone fruit trees -- you'll get larger fruit at harvest (and avoid limb breakage) if some is thinned now. The UC recommendation is to thin fruit when it is about 3/4 of an inch in diameter. Peaches and nectarines should be thinned to about 6 inches apart; smaller fruit such as plums and pluots can be about 4 inches apart. Apricots can be left at 3 inches apart. Apples and pears should be thinned to one fruit per cluster of flowers, 6 to 8 inches apart.
* Azaleas and camellias looking a little yellow? If leaves are turning yellow between the veins, give them a boost with chelated iron.
* Pinch chrysanthemums back to 12 inches for fall flowers. Cut old stems to the ground.
* Weed, weed, weed! Don’t let unwanted plants go to seed.
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