I made a big pot of chicken soup yesterday to keep in the refrigerator and heat up bowls of as needed. It's cold enough now to really appreciate a bowl of hot homemade soup. I cooked the chicken first, then removed the bones and shredded the meat, then added broccoli, halved cherry tomatoes, diced onion, and rice.

BUT - I put way too much rice in. And I let it simmer too long. When I went to check it, I found that the rice had taken up all of the available liquid. It looked kind of off-putting, too. I had half a bottle of V-8 in the frig and I dumped that in and stirred it around. It didn't help much. I put it in the frig and picked up some bread on the way home from work today in case R looked at my creation and balked. I figured he could at least have a sandwich.

But actually, he didn't. He put some of that strange-looking glop in a bowl and added water, and cooked it in the microwave and stirred it all around, and then he ate it and pronounced it good. And in one of those funny Gift of the Magi moments, it turned out that while I was stopping on the way home to get bread for his hypothetical sandwich, he was stopping on the way home to pick up cornbread muffins to go with my soup. And R doesn't typically like cornbread.

I remember once when R and I were newly wed, I let the rice boil dry and when I served it, it was crunchy. I told R he didn't have to eat it, but he told me it was fine (crunch, crunch). I think his mama must have trained him well.