Orzo Chicken Lemon Soup

This is one of my favorites and sooo easy to make! We serve it with toasted crusty bread. You add a nice leafy green salad to make it a complete meal.

Ingredients

2 cooked chicken breasts, cut in small pieces
8 cups chicken stock
3/4 cup orzo
3 eggs
2/3 + cup fresh squeezed lemon juice
3 TBSP lemon zest
Mediterranean salt, ground pepper to taste
4 TBSP chopped fresh rosemary

In large saucepan, brink stock to boil over medium heat. Reduce to medium low, add orzo and cook uncovered until tender, about 15-20 minutes. About 5 minutes before pasta is done, add the chicken pieces.

Place eggs in a mixing bowl, whisk will adding in lemon juice. Stir in zest. Keep whisking and slowly add a ladleful of the hot stock to the egg mixture. Slowly add the egg mixture to the stock in saucepan and stir. Stock should thicken slightly.

Season to taste with salt and pepper. Remove from heat and serve immediately, garnished with fresh parsley.

Spot didn't give a paw rating because she thought we were cooking onions. Once she realized we weren't, she sat at our feet with high hopes.

Get Your Salad Freak On Part 1

I'm on a salad binge and morphed this one from The Chew's Brown Derby recipe. Since I saw this, we've had this many times... confirming my new salad freak. Just in time for summer...

INGREDIENTS
2 heads of red leaf lettuce
1 cup crumbled blue cheese
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
1/2 tsp sugar
juice from 1 fresh lemon
1 1/2 + sea salt
1/2 + freshly ground black pepper
1 1/2 tsp thick Worcestershire sauce

LATER
1 1/3 cups extra virgin olive oil

WHAT TO DO
An hour before you want to nosh, prepare this lovely dressing. Using a (clean and empty) spaghetti-sauce sized jar, add the diced garlic. Then add the red wine vinegar, sugar, lemon, salt, pepper and W sauce. Shake well. Then add the extra virgin olive oil. Shake again and chill. When you serve - shake, shake, shake. This dressing will keep for 12 days in the fridge. Not so true for us. We drank it fast!

SERVING IDEAS
We like it over red-tipped lettuce with either parmesan or blue cheese and croutons. Tonite we used our George Foreman indoor grill to cook up some chicken tenders on sale. The boys diced those up and added them to their salads.

The original recipe calls for iceberg and romaine and cherry tomatoes. This is on the "try it" list, but next I will try making my own croutons out of dry deli bread.

Spot? She's her own freak... thinking blue cheese is safe for babies or doggies