Caldo Maya

This week's topic is all about food. You see, me and my crazy friends have decided to pick a topic every week to blog about. One girl gets to pick every week. This week Britta picked your favorite cold day recipe. As you guys probably know, I don't cook. I can make 1. chicken salad sandwiches 2. lasagna 3. peach cobbler. That's it. However, my husband is an awesome cook. He makes this soup (from Bettty Crocker) and I LOVE it!! So, here goes:

2 to 2 1/2 meaty chicken pieces
6 cups water
2 cups coarsely chopped onion
2 cups "" "" celery
1 large " " "" tomato
1/2 snipped fresh cilantro
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. ground cumin
1/2 tsp. ground red pepper
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 1/2 cups chopped carrots
1 or 2 poblano chile peppers (charred, skinned, seeded and chopped)

Skin chicken. In a large pot, place chicken, water, half of the onion and celery, all of the tomato, cilantro, salt, cumin, red pepper and black pepper. Bring to a boil: reduce heat. Cover and simmer about 50 minutes. Remove chicken and let cool slightly. Strain broth mixture and discard veggies. Return broth to pot. Add remaining celery, onion and carrots. Bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer covered for 2o minutes or u til veggies are tender.

Remove chicken from bones, chop, and add chick and peppers to broth. Heat through. Ladle into bowls and enjoy!!

Optional toppings:
sliced avocado
cilantro
green onions
sour cream (I recommend!!)
fried tortilla strips.

This sounds harder than it is, I promise. Something about whole chicken pieces scares me, but Pat makes it look really easy! I really think I could even do it. Anyway, so worth it. YUMMO!