Chicken soup

Chicken soup is good all year round. Its great after a day sledding or shoveling in the winter.  It always makes you feel better when you're sick.  Chicken soup is a great meal to bring to friends having hard times, or a new baby.  Here's mine, although it changes depending on seasonal vegetables, or veggies I want to clear out of my crisper drawer.

Yes, this uses a slow cooker, but you can do it on the square thing in your kitchen if you'd like too.  I add no oil or butter, so no added fats here!

2 cups vegetables (any really, celery, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, scallions, corn, although if you are going to add peas, I'd wait until 10 minutes before serving, and just stir them it, they stay bright green this way)
1 cup cooked chicken (I always save some dark meat and some breast when I cook a whole chicken, just throw it in the freezer and your all set when you want to make this soup)
2 quarts of chicken broth (8 cups)
1 cup brown rice (or 1/2 cup brown rice and 1/2 cup rinsed quinoa)
2 teaspoons herbes de Provence
salt and pepper to taste

I usually just use all rice, but thought I'd give the quinoa a try.  It was a really nice change and Jeanne loved it.  I make this soup every other week or so.  The whole family loves it and I never worry about throwing out leftovers.  This is one of my soups that Jeanne always has two bowl fulls the night I make it and is willing to eat leftovers the next day or two (if it makes it).

Specifically, the batch I made yesterday had the following:
broccoli, 1 carrot, 1/2 a cooked sweet potato (it basically dissolves, so each and every bite has a veggie in it, even if you have picky eaters), frozen corn, and I added frozen peas at the end
Some chicken from a previous whole bird cooked
1/2 cup brown rice
1/2 cup quinoa
I only had 'regular' chicken stock on hand, so I used about 3.5 cups of stock and the rest water to reduce the sodium.  I prefer to add salt to my soup then not eat soup I find too salty.

The result was more of a stew than soup, but it was jam packed with protein and vegetables!  We had it for dinner last night, and lunch today.  Never a complaint by Jeanne.  Loki looked like he wanted some too, but he'll have to wait.