Homemade chicken soup

Spring is in full swing now a days and although the majority of flu season is behind us some bugs are still lingering and effecting people. One nasty bug hit one of my friends not to long ago *cough cough, last month when I was lazy in the kitchen* I really had no spark to cook anything, my imagination with food had gone dry (much to Mr. Beams dismay)  That is until I heard that our friend was sick and the night before had a fever of 103+.  I believe whenever someone is sick its when they need to be pampered the most, when your sick, being comfortable is a hard thing to achieve. To me homemade chicken soup it the closest to comfort one can get while sick, so I set to work.

Onions, Carrots, and Celery is the holy trinity that you begin with,  I also chopped up some garlic and shiitake mushrooms, chicken of course, and chicken stock (I happen to have homemade in the freezer).

 I don't use noodles not only because I'm gluten free but because before I was I hated how soggy the noodles would get. So I made sure  there was a ton of veggies for the soup.

 I set the frozen stock to the side to melt a bit before adding it.

I put a good helping of olive oil in the bottom of my cast iron pot and added the chicken. When that was done cooking I added the holy trinity and let the onions sweat out there goodness before adding the garlic and mushrooms.

Looks yummy :)  I added the chicken stock and a bit of extra water to make sure there was plenty of broth. Now I let it cook for a bit to develop all the flavors and added some spices. The homemade broth already had some herbs like rosemary, marjoram and thyme, so I salt and peppered it and added a pinch of coriander. I checked its taste and when I was happy with it I took it off the burner to cool. I was pressed for time at  this point  and I wasn't able to take any more pictures, but I transferred the soup into some containers and delivered it. Our friend was better within two days, wither it was the soup or all the NyQuil she drank we will never know.  But she did say the soup helped and was amazing :)