Part of this whole journey is getting my life in order. I’m doing that through losing weight and paying off debt. The hard part about paying off debt is learning how to cook meals that will last for a while and being able to do it cheaply.

This weeks meal is homemade chicken soup. Here are the ingredients:

• Split fryer chicken breasts. Bone-in.

• One stalk of celery, diced.

• Four whole carrots, diced.

• One quart of canned corn, fresh from the farm.

• 32 oz of Swanson’s chicken broth.

• One diced yellow onion.

• One container of baby mushrooms pre-sliced.

• Six cups of water (or so).

• Curry powder to taste.

The recipe is very simple:

1. Bring chicken broth to a boil and add chicken breasts with the bones attached.

2. Boil the chicken until the internal temperature reaches 170 degrees. Remove from pot, shred and put it back in the pot. You can add the bones back in if you would like but it’s not necessary.

3. While the chicken is, before you remove it, go ahead and chop up all of your veggies and prep them to add to the pot. I like to do this while it’s cooking so I don’t have to do it all at once afterwards.

4. After you’ve added the chicken back to the pot, dump in all the remaining ingredients. If needed, add more water. Make sure the water at least covers all of the ingredients.

5. If you want, feel free to add any seasoning you would like. Adding salt isn’t necessary, unless you have a death wish. The broth already has 36% of your daily value of sodium in one cup (yuck). Your only other alternative is to make your own chicken broth from scratch, but who has time for that?

6. Return the soup to a boil and then reduce to a medium low heat and let it simmer until all the veggies are nice and soft.

This pot made at least a gallon of soup so I’ll be able to have this for lunch and dinner for the next week. Hooray for being cheap!