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Today begins Stephen’s birthday weekend. His 30TH BIRTHDAY WEEKEND! Man, 30 just seems SO old :)
I had a friend in college who, every time we celebrated a birthday, would make a comment along the lines of “only 10 more years until you’re 30!”….”Only 8 more years until you turn 30”. At the time we laughed about it. 30 still seemed so far away; like far enough away that it would never actually happen. I still have a little over a year left until I reach that old age of 30 so I’m going to hold on to my 20s for a while longer. (sorry, Stephen. You know I’m kidding, kind of. :D)
We started the celebrating on Thursday night by having dinner at the bar of the restaurant where our wedding reception was AND going to hear a talk by Neil deGrasse Tyson. The tickets were a last minute impulse buy and IT WAS AWESOME. If you have no idea who I’m talking about then you should really check out “Cosmos” which is now on Netflix live stream.
Only a few of the space things were over my head (pun??) and I’m pretty proud of that. I spent half of the time being distracted that he had taken his shoes off immediately upon walking on stage and gave his whole talk barefoot.
The weekend will continue with lots of food, possibly a Star Wars marathon (I’ve never seen any of them!), a night out with friends, and lunch with family on his actual birthday.
In other news: I think winter is finally beginning to appear in Nashville as of this morning. It was almost 70 yesterday afternoon….just how I like my Nashville Autumns. However, this morning it was pretty damn cold (for my standards). But at least I have about 10 different kinds of soup in my house right now including this Slow Cooker Chicken Noodle Soup!!:
This is actually my first real Slow Cooker recipe on the blog which is very strange to me considering I own THREE crockpots and use them on a rather regular basis. I definitely plan on doing more of them. Truth is: crock pot recipes are often very hard to photograph and I think I’ve always been intimidated by trying to make crock pot meals look good in photos. I’m working on it.
As you can imagine, this is a pretty easy one and requires little effort outside of chopping a few veggies. Everything but the noodles are adding into the crockpot and left to cook for a few hours.
About an hour before serving, the chicken is taken out of the slow cooker and shredded/ diced. I use THIS PROCESS to shred my chicken in the stand mixer which is part ingenuity and part laziness.
The chicken is then added back in and the noodles are added. HOWEVER, if you plan to save some of this soup and re-heat it the next day, I suggest cooking the noodle separately and add them in right before eating. Next day, the noodles can get a bit softer than you might want. Still super yummy but maybe not ideal…?
I add in a heavy dose of fresh parsley to my soup (because I’m obsessed) and eat it in the largest bowl that I can find.
Here’s to lots and LOTS more soups being made in my crockpot over the next few months.
See how to make the Slow Cooker Chicken Noodle Soup here:
Slow Cooker Chicken Noodle Soup
Ingredients
- 3 medium chicken breasts, trimmed of fat
- 3 carrots, peeled and diced
- 3 stalks of celery, diced
- 1 medium onion, diced
- ½ teaspoon of dried and crushed rosemary
- ½ teaspoon of garlic powder
- ½ teaspoon of salt
- 7 cups of chicken or vegetable broth
- 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, optional but recommended!
- 2 ½ cups of wide egg noodles
- additional salt and pepper to taste
- optional: parsley for garnish
Instructions
- In a slow cooker, combine the chicken, carrots, celery, onion, rosemary, garlic powder, slat, broth, and olive oil. Stir to combine.
- Cook on low for 6 hours or on high for 3 hours.
- After that time passes, take out the chicken, shred/ chop it into bite size pieces, and add it back into the slow cooker. **Add the noodles as well and stir to combine. Cook for an additional 10-20 minutes checking for noodles to be done to your liking.
- Salt and pepper to taste, garnish with parsley and ENJOY!!
Imagine how old it feels to be his mother! I remember thinking 30 sounded old until I reached 40 and it was downhill from there :) Sounds as though there’s lots of celebrating going on and we’re looking forward to tomorrow.