4 Weeks To Fill Your Freezer: Day 6--Chicken Noodle Soup

Today kicked off week 2 of the Fill Your Freezer Challenge, and lunches were on the agenda over at Money Saving Mom.  I did not start on lunches today, though I did spend a good amount of time browsing recipes, hers and others that I googled, and have a few plans in mind.

Today, I made soup.   Lots and lots of soup.   When we first moved into our house, my grandmother gave me this ginormous stock pot.   I was not sure what I would ever need to cook in a pot so big, but then I began freezer cooking, and let me tell you that is my favorite pot ever!

So I thawed out a whole chicken, bought on sale for $0.59/lb.  $3.50 for the whole bird.    This morning before I went out to Aldi, I started it in a pot of boiling water.   I let it get up to a good boil, and then turned it off and let it just sit in the hot water while we were gone.   It still continues to cook this way.  When I got back i turned it on low and let it cook a little bit longer.  Then I pulled the chicken up out of the pot  (I didn't let it get too cooked so it fell apart.  I wanted it to come out in one piece so I wouldn't have to be fishing bone out of my soup base!

I pulled all the meat of the chicken, separating the white and dark meat, because I prefer dark meat in my soups, and I didn't need all the meat for the soup anyhow.  So there is now a container of cooked and shredded white meat sitting in my fridge waiting to be used, also.

Then I tossed the dark meat back into the pot along with some celery, corn, green beans, mixed veggies, and my homemade stewed tomatoes from last week.   (The great thing about soup is you can pretty much toss in whatever you have on hand...I used frozen celery & green beans, fresh corn, and canned mixed veggies!)  I let it all simmer on low and about an hour before dinner time I tossed in some ABC noodles I had in my pantry.

We all ate, and I thought I would have 3 more containers to freeze....turns out I have 6!

Obviously I recycle all of my margarine tubs, but I find they are perfect to hold one night's worth of food for the 4 of us and usually have a lunch left for my husband to bring the next day.

These are all sitting around on the counter cooling and will go into the large garage freezer tonight.

You might say that it's too hot for soup, but honestly we all just love soup!  It doesn't really matter what the temperature is, we eat it year round!  

Tomorrow I plan to get some lunches into the freezer, but I think I need to rearrange it first!