Homemade Turkey Soup

Happy New Year!

I really don't know where the time has gone, but way back in November, I cooked my first turkey for a Thanksgiving-themed potluck that I hosted for my friends.  I was very nervous but I think it turned out fairly well, and overall it was actually pretty simple.  Even though my friends made a good dent in the turkey, I still had quite a bit left over.  I enjoyed adding it to salads for lunch and heating it up for dinner, but I got to the point where I really didn't want any more turkey, so I decided to put the rest into a soup.

Woops, forgot to get a picture before the turkey was carved.  Sorry for this blurry one!

I just added ingredients as I went and hoped for the best.  It kind of reminded me of the "button soup" story - did anyone else read that when they were younger?  Anyways, I was actually really surprised by how well
it turned out!

Turkey "Button" Soup

Ingredients:
- 15 cups of water
- 5 vegetable bouillon cubes
- about 10 green onions, sliced
- about 4 carrots, sliced
- leftover turkey, torn into pieces
- about half a bag of frozen spinach
- 1 can of cannellini beans, rinsed and drained
- a pinch of dried rosemary
- a hefty shake of dried basil
- 2 bay leaves
- about half a bag of whole wheat egg noodles

Simmer all of the ingredients, except for the egg noodles, in a big pot for about an hour or so, and then add the egg noodles and let it simmer for about another 30 minutes.  Remove the bay leaves before eating.

I'm not very good at photographing soup/ steamy things.

This recipe is extremely easy to customize based on the ingredients you have on hand - you could substitute another type of leftover meat (i.e. chicken, ham, beef roast, etc.) or leave out the meat altogether, use another kind of onion, different kinds of frozen or fresh leafy greens, use different kinds of beans, change up the spices, etc.  The possibilities are endless!

This is a much better picture of the soup, which I had as part of my dinner one night.  I also had a salad with romaine lettuce, a crumbled carrot, beet & bean burger, sliced almonds, and homemade croutons, with half a grapefruit on the side.  

The soup kept well in the fridge for quite awhile and was great to heat up for lunch or dinner.  Even then I couldn't finish it all, so I froze the rest of it and will pull it out sometime during the next semester when I need a quick already-made meal.  I love that I know exactly what's in it, as opposed to store bought cans of soup.

Normally when I make up recipes as I go (which is a very rare occurrence), the results don't turn out very well, but this was definitely an exception.  I'm glad I learned that homemade soup is actually very simple and doesn't take much effort at all!

I hope the new year is off to a great start for everyone!  I got a new phone for Christmas and I've been having fun playing around with the camera on it.  I'm really excited that it can easily take panoramic pictures! I took this picture on a little family trip to Michigan.

Song of the day:

"Coyote" by The Lonely Forest.  My friend Caitlin turned me on to this band and I'm kind of obsessed with this whole album, which is called Arrows.