I am so glad that Mary is back, aren't you? 

The Show and Tell that I want to share with everyone is not ready for this week.  My dear friends, Dan and Baghya, members of our church, have just returned from a four week gospel crusade in India, that our church sponsors. God blessed greatly and thousands attended.  Many people came to Jesus through the hearing of the gospel.  I have so many pictures that were sent to me that I want to share, but I haven't figured out how to transfer them into my photobucket, as they are in a different format than I have ever used.  When I get back from our upcoming trip to Washington D.C. I hope to share these with you.

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Although not "ready" with what I really wanted to show and tell, I didn't want to miss out - so I am going to share with you a soup recipe that I made this week that is very healthy. 

With my mom’s recent health crisis, leaving her weak and without strength, I wanted to nourish her back to health with small,  but often meals, packing them with as much nutrition as I possibly could.  Here is a broth/soup recipe that tastes good and is excellent for restoring one’s weakened body through sickness. 

• I start this soup/broth with a rich chicken base.  Secret:  I save chicken bones in my freezer for this.  In fact, and shhhhh, please don’t tell anyone, but I have a freezer almost full of chicken bones.  I have been saving them from every chicken meal our family has eaten in the past year, with really good intentions of making broth and then freezing it for my soup bases.  But this has been a busy year and I have not made any soup broths, (so thus the freezer full of chicken bones!)

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·         I fill a very large metal pan with water, put the bones in it, and begin to simmer it. 

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Now, I add the fun ingredients:

A half head of cabbage (I don’t cut it or anything, I just throw it in.)

A full onion

Lots of garlic cloves

A bunch of fresh parsley

A bag of organic carrots (rinse and dump in the water, whole)

One hot pepper (just to give it a spike.)  I would have put another one in, but thought I’d better just start with one).

A few fresh asparagus

A lot of potatoes – as many as I had on hand.

A few celery stalks

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·         For seasoning, I added sea salt and pepper.  Sea Salt is an important ingredient.  Table salt is Sodium and Chloride and it is not good for you. Plus,  Sea Salt has 40% less sodium than table salt.

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·         Now, for the secret ingredient that I think made this broth tasty- Bragg Liquid Aminos – an all purpose seasoning that is a soy protein.  There is a lot of protein in this seasoning and adds to the over-all health benefit of this broth.  (This seasoning is similar to Soy Sauce, but without the MSG (very harmful.)  

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I had thought I would serve this just as a broth to my mom, but then I thought, maybe she’d like it better as a soup with some substance.  So instead of draining all the veggies, I put some of the broth into a bowl, then added some of the potatoes, asparagus, carrots, and cabbage (now that it was cooked it took seconds to chop into small pieces for soup).  Before serving this, I added the Bragg Liquid Aminos.

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I separated this broth into small Pyrex dishes with fitted lids and stored in the refrigerator for an instant meal for my mom.  She liked the taste of it and even my 16 year old daughter liked it.

 If you have an elderly person that you are taking care of or taking care of anyone recovering from illness, this is a good soup/broth for them.