Rather Stocky

So last time I wrote, I was doing the 10 day no added sugar challenge. Amazingly, and without trying to, I lost a stone just from cutting out added sugar from my post-Christmas diet. I suspect that my love of cider played a rather large role in this, and it does make a lady realise just how much one is capable of putting away.

In my house we celebrate success by over indulging, and this time we really noticed just how horrendous we felt after binging on all of the things we weren't allowed on the sugar embargo. Apparently we actually do feel better when we try and look after ourselves- who knew?! Looks like we might try and behave ourselves a little more often.

So with this in mind I'm now on to my next self-imposed challenge.

I don't really eat chicken anymore, it's never been a favourite of mine, and since investigating animal welfare and eating less and less meat, chicken is unlikely to be my sustenance of choice. Despite this, I still buy more chicken than any other meat as I make up food for the dog, and funnily enough, she blooming loves a drumstick.

I used to give our pooch a raw leg or two to chew on for mealtimes, but all this changed a few weeks ago when she came into our bedroom one morning and coughed up what looked like an entire thigh bone. Seeing as she hadn't been fed since dinner the previous evening, where exactly she had managed to secrete this bone for 12 hours was a bit of a concerning mystery and has meant I now prefer to debone her dinner. Obviously just throwing away a pile of perfectly decent chicken bones is against my nature, so I've started making chicken stock and this week I have decided that I will be making fresh stock every day and knocking together a new stock-based meal for lunch and/or dinner. Today, thanks to some runny noses, I think I'll keep it simple and try some good old kick-a-cold-in-the-balls style soup.

If you don't have an abundance of chicken bones going to waste, obviously feel free to swap out the chicken stock for veggie stock for today's recipe of


Maybe Medicinal Sour Soup
Serves 2-4

1 inch of ginger, finely diced
3 garlic cloves, finely sliced
1/2 yellow pepper, chopped
1/4 red pepper, chopped
lychee wine
red vinegar
tamari or soy sauce
Szechuan peppercorns, smashed and chopped
couple of handfuls of curly kale, stems removed & leaves roughly chopped
couple of handfuls of spinach, roughly chopped
1.5l chicken or veg stock
chilli flakes
1tsp ghee or fat of your choice

  1. If you don't include the time making the stock, this is one of the quickest soups I've ever knocked together that still manages to be tasty even through a clogging cold. In light of this, I'm going to make you pre-heat a large saucepan on a med heat, just for funsies.
  2. Add in your ghee or oil or whatever fat you're partial to using- although steer clear of any stronly flavoured oils like sesame- and sling in your garlic, ginger and pepper pieces.
  3. Fry these off quickly, they should be pretty small so will only need a few seconds and you want to stop cooking them before they are too soft or start to brown.
  4. Cover the garlic, ginger and pepper pieces with lychee wine and bring to the boil. Add in the same amount of red vinegar as you did lychee wine and get it bubbling again.
  5. Add in your stocky beast and bring to the boil once more. Chuck in your Szechuan peppercorns and kale. Once vibrant, add in the spinach and stir.
  6. Add glugs of tamari or soy sauce to taste.
  7. Serve and top with chilli flakes.

How bloody easy was that? Admittedly, my stock was still warm, so this was a super fast lunch for me to chuck together. If you are feeling poorly, it should help keep you hydrated, (counteracting all that boozing) and I was informed that even through these stinky colds, it manages to taste like it's doing some good health wise. Personally, given the amount of loo roll I've blown through this week, I'm just happy we could taste it at all.











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