Oops

Part of cooking is trial and error. Over the past couple days I've made a few things that didn't exactly turn out as planned. Ok, so it wasn't this bad...



...but I thought I should share anyway.

First of all, I made the granola bars again. I didn't measure the honey, I just eyeballed it and I realized once it was too late that I only used about 1/4 cup instead of 1/2 cup. When I tried to cut them they pretty much crumbled. You definitely need to use 1/2 - 2/3 cup honey to keep them intact. However, I did get some nice chunky granola to put on my Greek yogurt. It's actually a good way to make granola with nice big clumps, if that's what you're going for. But if you're going for granola bars, use more honey.



And the other mistake - chicken noodle soup. Peter is home sick and I decided I should make him chicken noodle soup. It really wasn't that bad of a mistake, I just put too much pasta in so it ended up being more of a stew than a soup - the pasta to chicken/vegetable ratio was off, plus the pasta soaked up most of the chicken stock. But it did taste really good. Here's the recipe with the correct amount of pasta.



2 bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts
salt & pepper
olive oil
8 cups chicken stock
2 carrots, chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
1/2 white onion, chopped
herbs de provence (optional)
1/2 a 16 oz. box of pasta (I used mini bow tie pasta)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Coat the chicken breasts with olive oil, and a sprinkle a good amount of salt and pepper over them. Don't be shy with the salt and pepper. I sliced the skin almost entirely off, put olive oil, salt, and pepper on the actual meat, then covered it back up with the skin to cook. Bake for 35-40 minutes.

Pour enough olive oil in a large soup pot just to cover the bottom. Heat the oil for a few minutes over medium heat, then add the onion, carrots, and celery. Add salt, pepper, and about 2 tsp of herbs de provence over the vegetables. Cook vegetables for about 5 minutes, then add all of the chicken stock. Turn heat up to high to bring the liquid to a boil, and add the pasta. Turn the heat down to low just a couple minutes before the pasta is done, as the pasta will continue to cook in the liquid even once the heat is lowered.

When the chicken is done cut it up into small pieces and add to the soup. Taste the soup for salt and pepper - I probably ended up adding almost 1 Tbl of salt to the soup over the course of cooking, but as I said I used too much pasta so if I had used the right amount I may not have needed so much salt. It all depends on how salty you like it, whether you used regular or low-sodium stock, etc.