Upbeat Movies to Watch While Social-Distancing

March 14, 2020March 25, 2020 ~ Judy's Chickens ~ 17 Comments

Over here at The Chick Inn, it’s movie night every night. Our Aussie enjoyed last night’s feature, Togo, a movie about a dog who saved the day. For my sons, if you are reading this, Dad wept.

First, a public service announcement:

The Meaning of FLATTEN THE CURVE and How YOU Can Help Flatten It

Here is what “flattening the curve” means: the dark blue hump on the graphic is what happens if we do nothing: everyone gets COVID-19 at once, and there are not enough hospital beds, able-bodied health professionals, and ventilators to care for the critically ill. This leads to lots of deaths.
Individuals can help flatten the curve by practicing social distancing, extreme hand-washing, and by canceling activities where large groups of people meet. When you flatten the curve, the same number of people get the disease (perhaps), but the number of infected people is spread out over time, thus fewer people end up in the hospital at the same time, allowing the health care system to meet the demand.

The Movies (I’ll be updating as new suggestions come in.)

Each movie was suggested by Facebook friends after I asked for recommendations for upbeat movies with a low body count that wouldn’t raise your BP. Most involve a good old hero’s journey story.

The Peanut Butter Falcon: (Beautiful; my favorite feel-good movie) A good Huck Finn journey story about a young man with Down Syndrome who escapes from an assisted living facility and meets a troubled fisherman who helps him reach his dream of becoming a wrestler. Stars Shia LaBeouf, Zack Gottsagen, and Dakota Johnson.

Togo: Based on a true story about a dogsled team led by a Siberian Husky named Togo and musher, Leonhard Seppala, played by Willem Dafoe, who race across Alaska during a storm to transport an antitoxin serum for a Diptheria epidemic to the frontier town of Nome. (Found it on the Disney Channel.) If it sounds familiar it’s because Balto got all the credit!

Troop Zero: A sweet and empowering story about a young girl and her misfit friends who come together to win a talent show — stars Viola Davis and Alisson Janney.

Instant Family: A sweet comedy-drama about two parents, played by Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne, who foster three siblings. I wouldn’t be mentioning it if didn’t have a happy ending.

The Upside: Based on a true story, this comedy-drama about a paralyzed billionaire, played by Bryan Cranston, hires a paroled convict, played by funny-man Kevin Hart, to be his caretaker. Both the billionaire and the caretaker are on a journey. Also stars Nicole Kidman and Julianna Margulies. Growth all around.

Ford v Ferrari: A surprisingly fun movie about American automobile engineers, played by Matt Damon and Christian Bale, charged by Ford execs, Henry Ford II and Lee Iaccoca, with building a racing car that will beat Ferrari at the Le Mans race of 1966.

The Good Liar: An enjoyable movie about a male con-artist who tries to swindle a wealthy widow, played by Helen Mirren. I don’t want to give anything away, so that is all I will write.

Brittany Runs a Marathon: A good movie about a hard-partying, overweight woman on a journey to fix her life by training for a marathon.

Harriet: A fantastic biographical story about Harriet Tubman, a slave in Maryland, who escapes with the help of the Underground Railroad, and then returns to the South to free her family and other slaves.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood: A beautiful biographical story about a journalist who is charged with writing a story about heroes for Esquire magazine. He interviews Mr. Rogers, played by Tom Hanks, and is changed by the experience. If you like this, be sure to watch the documentary about Fred Rogers, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

The Two Popes: A good biographical story about the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, played by Anthony Hopkins, and the election of his successor, Pope Francis.

Dark Waters: Based on a true story about a lawyer, played by Mark Ruffalo, who is asked by a client to investigate Dupont, who at the time is knee-deep in making profits from the sale of Teflon-coated products. Eye-Opening. It makes you wonder what other gadgets we use today will turn out to be carcinogenetic tomorrow.

Recommended Oldies But Goodies:
White Nights
Babette’s Feast
The Hundred-Foot Journey
The Big Chill
The Bridges of Madison County (A little slow)
Same Time Next Year
The Dressmaker
It Happened One Night (with Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable)
Enchanted April
Shawshank Redemption
Up (Pixar)
Field of Dreams
A Room with a View
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
The Russians Are Coming
The Japanese Story
Where the Red Fern Grows (kind of slow old movie about a boy & his dogs)

Recommended Series:
About Time
The Morning Show
Good Omens

Tell me what movies I am missing??
Spenser Confidential: We loved this even though it is a shoot-em-up. Mark Wahlberg stars.
Molly’s Game: A biographical crime drama written by Aaron Sorkin starring Jessica Chastain and Kevin Costner. (It was good)
Knives Out: A modern whodunnit with Christopher Plummer, Jammie Lee Curtis, and Don Johnson. (It was good)
Rocket Man: Elton during his days of creativity & addiction.(Interesting & sad)
JoJo Rabbit: (It was good)
Yesterday: (It was good)
The Durrells in Corfu
The Adams Family
Vanity Fair (mini-series)
Galaxy Quest, Chicken Run
Blinded by the Light
Emma
Call of the Wild: (Harrison Ford version)
The Nice Guys
Justine

Nashville’s beloved Isle of Printing has come up with this clever and hip print as they work with the Nashville Metro Health Department and Nashville Metro Arts to get the coronavirus word out. Follow them @isleofprinting.

Whether you have allergies, the flu, or just need a recipe for dinner, check out this link for soup recipes. Note: you will need to start saving rotisserie chicken carcasses.

Last Ditch before You Pitch Chicken Soup

Today, 3/14, is Pi day. Here are my favorite PIE recipes.

Thanks to my friends who shared a list of their faves: Hosanna, Nan, Ouizzi, Bee, Kay, Marion, Lesley, Corabel, Helen, Mary Lou, Alyce, Irwin, Sarah, Deborah, Marguerite, Heather, Anne, Shawn, Gary, Jamie, Rees, Cathy, Melinda, Paula, Anna, Carolyn x 2, Vicki, Mary Jo, and Cathy.

Take care, xoJudy

Follow Judy’s Chickens on Instagram and Pinterest @JudysChickens.

Always check my blog for the latest version of a recipe.

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Last Ditch before You Pitch Rotisserie Chicken Soup

March 12, 2020March 23, 2020 ~ Judy's Chickens ~ 13 Comments

Over the last two weeks, I have had my annual late winter/early spring allergies and dramatic cough that happen when trees start to bud in Nashville. I have socially distanced myself this time around because, you know, coronavirus. This self-imposed quarantine has been hard to maintain because of an F4 tornado that came through Middle Tennessee. I am someone who looks to be helpful. I have been a disaster nurse for the Nashville Chapter of the Red Cross since 2005 in the aftermath of Katrina. I have worked in shelters all over Middle-Tennessee with other tornadoes. But last week, with a persistent cough, I could not be a nurse or a cook (at The Nashville Food Project ).

I find soup to be infinitely satisfying when I get to feeling like this.

I have been known to eat a bowl of homemade soup over brown rice or pasta for breakfast, lunch, and dinner when I don’t feel well. As such, every morning, I dug through our garage freezer chest, past all the cookies and quart containers of marinara, to get to my beloved stash of frozen pasta e fagioli, Aunt Bridget’s soup, Portuguese kale soup, turkey gumbo (too spicey to qualify for sick soup), roasted butternut squash, and duck stew. Eventually, my husband and I finished all of them. We were plum out of soup.

Looking in the refrigerator, I spied this lone, half-eaten rotisserie chicken.

Five years ago, I would have pitched it after four days. A few days ago, it became a colorful bowl of flavorful, healthy soup.

I’m going to show you how I made the soup, in pictures, with links at the end that describe in detail how you can do it. There will be answers to questions like, Why do you put vinegar in it? And, Where’s the salt? One thing I do want to say is if you make this soup, please double-strain the stock to get rid of small bones.

[So many people have called about how to make this soup. Refer to this post for details: Chicken Stock from Rotisserie Chicken Bones. Tip 1: add 1 tablespoon of cider vinegar to the water for one carcass. The vinegar helps draw the collagen out of the bones. Use more vinegar if making a large pot. Tip 2: do not bring the stock to a rolling boil. Hard boiling makes the broth cloudy. Tip 3: for a golden-colored broth, use yellow onions, not red onions.]

A Pot of Last Ditch before You Pitch Chicken Soup — in Pictures

Yield: about 6 servings

Making Large Quantities of Chicken Stock
I am very into the concept of zero food waste; I typically throw finished rotisserie chickens into a storage bag I keep in the freezer. When I get 4 or 5 carcasses, I cook the stew out of them for twelve hours and freeze the strained stock in quart containers.

Here are the recipes that describe how to do that:
Chicken Stock from Rotisserie Chicken Bones
Sick Soup, Sometimes Known as Snow Day Soup
Rotisserie Chicken Soup, Revisited

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Always check my blog for the latest version of a recipe.

Grandma’s Sick Soup, Sometimes Known as Snow Day Soup

January 31, 2016February 18, 2021 ~ Judy's Chickens ~ 21 Comments

A few years ago, my friend Jennifer told me her family was sick with the flu. What I heard was, “Stop at Kroger and pick up a ten-pack of chicken thighs to make the Johnstons a pot of soup!” I bought the chicken and immediately set about making stock. My husband came home, smelled the soup simmering, and automatically asked, “Who’s sick?”

A few weeks ago, I was sick with a winter cold. My mom’s sister, Rachelle, heated a bowl of chicken soup for me. It was warm and wonderful. She uses my rotisserie bone broth recipe to make the chicken stock and her mother’s recipe to make the soup.

Chicken Stock from Rotisserie Chicken Bones
This stock is made with roasted bones, veggies, aromatics, and water.

Aunt Bridget’s Chicken Soup with Little Meatballs
This stock is made with raw thigh meat, bones, veggies, aromatics, and water.

A few words on ingredients:

Canned Stewed Tomatoes:
I like to purée stewed tomatoes before using them in a recipe. While I love the instant flavor boost you get from a can of stewed tomatoes, I don’t care for the texture or taste of sliced and diced tomatoes. Rachelle turned me on to Del Monte’s brand of “Italian Recipe” Stewed Tomatoes and I like it.

Heel of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese:
Using the heel of a wedge of Parmesan as flavoring was Mom’s secret ingredient in both her spaghetti sauce and soup. I grew up with a baggie of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese heels in the refrigerator and for the longest time, I had no idea why Mom saved them. Truth be told, I may have even thrown a few away when I was cleaning out her refrigerator. Big mistake. Those Parmesan heels are solid gold. They are an instant flavor booster. They are also a little salty so be sure to taste test your soup before adding salt. Chicken carcasses, heels of cheese. You probably think I have the eye of newt in my fridge, too.

Ingredients:

4 quarts chicken stock
2 cans Italian-Style stewed tomatoes, puréed
1 can Fire-Roasted tomatoes, puréed
6 cups sliced celery (1½ pounds)
6 cups sliced carrots (2 pounds)
½ heel from a wedge of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
2 teaspoons garlic pepper
2 cans cannellini beans, drained
2 pounds cooked chicken meat
2 cans quartered artichoke hearts, drained and chopped
salt to taste
1 head of escarole or other mildly bitter green, leaves washed and chopped
Pasta or ravioli, cooked in a separate pot of water

Mise en Place:

Instructions:
1) Add stock to a large soup pot and heat until the gelatinous stock melts.
2) Add tomatoes, carrots, celery, and the Parmesan heel. Bring to a boil over high heat and then simmer over low heat for about one hour.
3) Add chopped chicken, beans, and artichoke hearts. Simmer 30 minutes.
4) About five minutes before you are ready to serve, stir in the greens and turn off the heat. The greens will wilt almost immediately.
5) Adjust the seasoning by adding salt and more garlic pepper, as needed.
6) If serving with pasta, cook per the package’s instructions.

About escarole:
Escarole is sometimes hard to find in Nashville. I would check Whole Foods first and if they don’t have it in stock, try Kroger. It is often the green of choice for many Italian soups. It is mildly bitter.

If you are going to serve pasta with your soup, I recommend using a box of ditalini, a small tubular and chewy pasta. It has always been my family’s favorite soup pasta. Cook it in a separate pot of water so the pasta doesn’t absorb all of your broth. Store unused cooked pasta in a separate container.

Rachelle’s chicken soup heals what ails you.

Sick Soup can easily become a very hearty Snowy Day Stew by adding artichoke hearts, rosemary, and ravioli. Last week, for a quickly organized dinner party for neighbors during a snow storm, I used a 20-ounce package of Buitoni Four Cheese Ravioli instead of the ditalini. I cooked the pasta in a separate pot; just as I recommend doing for the ditalini. Be sure to have a bowl of freshly grated Parmesan cheese on the table to share.

One of my dinner guests, on that snowy evening, was my neighbor, Ann Shayne, of the dynamic knitting duo at MasonDixonKnitting.com. Ann and Kay Gardiner have recently published a best-selling knitter’s coloring book. Check it out here. Rachelle colored the picture on the right from her copy of the coloring book. In the background of the photo on the left, you can see the knitted mitered-square blanket that Kay taught me how to make. There are how-to instructions for knitting this blanket in MDK’s first knitting book.

Like bone broth, knitting is good for you, too; just ask New York Times health columnist, Jane Brody. She recently posted an article about the health benefits of knitting in the NYT. I’ll find out real quick if my sons read my blog by whether they notice I’ve exposed a Mom’s Trade Secret about raising them in a comment I posted in response to Brody’s article.

So, here’s to a little winter cold therapy with sick soup, or cups of bone broth, knitting, and coloring.

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Italian style meals, sustainable gardening tips, and lots of segues in between

Sick Soup

Last Ditch before You Pitch Rotisserie Chicken Soup

Grandma’s Sick Soup, Sometimes Known as Snow Day Soup

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