Forget Chicken Soup for the Soul. I need chicken soup for me!

I've been down for nearly a week with the flu. Remember: the flu shot is your friend. If I hadn't gotten one, I'd still be very, very, sick.

I'm finally back up, and back to blogging. Now that I'm back, I wanted to highlight some good chicken soup recipes.

Ma Cobb's Chicken Soup-Featured in Big Damn Chefs and on The Signal Podcast, this great chicken soup recipe has lots of curry, cayenne, and garlic.

The Barefoot Contessa has a great chicken stock recipe. I like this one because it tells you how much salt to put in the stock. Most recipes don't. For a novice cook, the hardest thing about making stock, is making sure it's got enough salt in it. But, don't discard the chicken like it says to. Pick the chicken out, dice up some carrots and celery, and use it for the soup.

Katie's lazy chicken soup-This recipe was invented by my younger sister. Still twice as good as what you'd get in a can, but so easy you can whip it together in a half hour, with very little chopping, even if you have the flu. Serves 2

1 carton chicken stock
1 small bag baby carrots
celery, roughly chopped (optional)
Box of seasoned pre-cooked chicken breast strips, Italian or Southwest seasoning.
1-2 cups egg noodles
1 Tablespoon Italian Seasoning or Poultry Seasoning (optional)
2 cloves crushed garlic (optional)

Heat up chicken broth. Add carrots, garlic, and other vegetables if using. Simmer 10 minutes. Add egg noodles and chicken strips, and simmer another 10-15 minutes until veggies get as tender as you want them and chicken strips are heated through. Taste soup and add extra seasoning if needed, but the seasoning on the strips should be enough.

Part 2 of How to use up 50 heads of garlic in 3 months

As promised.

Garlic soup – Toasting the bread before simmering it gives the soup a richer flavor. This is very soothing when you are sick, and surprisingly easy on the stomach. Serves 2.

Take some good bread, cube it. Saute it in a saucepan large enough to make some soup, with some olive oil and several whole peeled cloves of garlic. You want the bread toasted and crouton-y, and the cloves can get a little toasty too.

Add 2 cups of chicken broth, vegetable broth, or water. Simmer the soup for 15-20 minutes. Serve hot.

Chicken and cloves – Easiest recipe ever, and it always impresses. Serves 4.

Put 4 chicken breasts in baking dish, and season with salt, pepper, and herbs. Peel 4 to 5 heads of garlic completely. Cut off any woody or bruised areas. Add a lot of olive oil, enough to come up the baking dish at least a third. Scatter garlic around chicken, so that most cloves are in the olive oil, and some are on top of the chicken. Cover and cook at 350 degrees, for at least 30 minutes. (If you use frozen chicken, make it at least an hour). Serve with crusty bread on the side. Smoosh roasted garlic on bread and use bread to sop up the garlic oil.

If you are cooking this for more or less than 4 people, estimate 1 head of garlic, 1 boneless, skinless chicken breast, and at least 1/4 cup of olive oil per person.

Garlic Dill pickles – the recipe I use is Alton Brown’s refrigerator pickle recipe, with extra garlic and lots of fresh dill springs thrown in.

Parmesan garlic dip - A dip I first created because powdered parmesan doesn't get enough respect.

1 16 -ounce container sour cream
¼ cup mayonnaise
¼ c. Parmesan cheese (the powdery kind from the green shaker)
1 clove garlic, minced finely
1 teaspoon salt
white pepper to taste
Mix all ingredients. Refrigerate. Serve with crackers and a bag of pre-mixed, pre-cut vegetables. This dip is especially good with snow peas.

Chocolate covered garlic – this isn’t as strange as it sounds, really. Then again, it’s not a recipe for everybody…because most people are too chicken to try it. The garlic is poached in wine, sugar, and spices, which makes it very mellow and sweet. It’s really not all that different than eating a chocolate-covered cherry, or a pretzel.

Since this recipe is originally from The Garlic Book, I can’t really post it without permission. However, since it’s apparently out of print, I will give the general procedure and ingredients for the recipe.

Peel a head of garlic. Simmer cloves in wine, sugar, lemon peel and spices, until soft. As cloves are cooling, melt a high quality melting chocolate. Dip cloves in chocolate using a toothpick, and lots of waxed paper to keep the mess down. Sore on waxed paper in a sealed container. These do not keep well, so eat within a day.

How to use up 50 heads of garlic in 3 months

To those of you who have complained that there's a dearth of garlic on this blog (which being named "Garlic is Love," should really have more garlic), I offer this post:

We had an Iron Chef party in June for my friend's birthday. We were given three options on what the secret ingredient might be, and it turned out to be "Battle Garlic." (Woo-hoo!) I won, but only by one point (a very close battle indeed).

The Chairman, the birthday girl's husband, wanted to dramatically rip the cover off the theme ingredients to reveal them, just like they do on the show. Which he did, by buying about 50 heads of garlic.

As the two chefs cooked, it slowly dawned on the "Chairman" that he had bought way too much garlic (The boy doesn't cook much). Even with my dishes of individual roasted garlic, we went through fewer than a half a dozen of the heads.

Oops.

We wound up splitting the difference, and I went home with about 25 heads of baby garlic, mexican garlic, and elephant garlic (which is actually a leek).

Thus, why I scrambled to find new ways to use up the leftover garlic this past summer.

Here's what I came up with:

* Anytime I was sauteeing anything, I added one clove of minced garlic. (1 clove per recipe)
* I made lots of dips that use a lot of garlic, like tsati..tzaz...cucumber garlic dip...onion dip with garlic, herb dip with garlic, hummus, and so on. (1-2 cloves per recipe)
* Garlic bread (1-2 cloves per recipe)
* Garlic dill pickles. (4-5 cloves per jar)
* Garlic soup. (1 HEAD per recipe)
* Chocolate covered garlic--no, wait, no one lets me cook that anymore... (1-2 HEADS of garlic per recipe, theoretically)
And, the mother of all garlic dishes when you have a ton of garlic...
* Chicken and 40 cloves of garlic (4-5 HEADS per recipe!!)

Armed with this phalanx of garlic recipes, I got through 25 heads before Labor Day, and even found myself using so much garlic that I had to go out and get a bunch of fresh stuff in bulk at the farmer's market.

I'll post the recipes separately.