I actually forgot to take a picture!

I've had a couple of sick kids around here this weekend, who weren't really interested in eating anything. Then my husband started showing similar symptoms to the children. A change in menu plan was definitely in order: greasy, homemade hamburgers were not a good fit for 3 boys who were having a hard time with food. What I needed was soup, warm, soothing and comforting.

What I chose was Asian Meatball noodle soup, a recipe I'd recently seen made on Fixing Dinner on the FoodNetwork, the show based on the Cooking for the Rushed cookbooks by Sandi Richard.

Long before I ever saw this show I was already preplanning my menu in advance, sometimes with a grocery list. At my peak (and I've not been so good lately), I would write out a weeks worth of dinner ideas, some from cookbooks, in one notebook, while I wrote down the specific grocery items I would need for those plans in another, being sure to include what day of the week I would need the exact items. As a stay at home parent I had more flexibility to go to the grocery store more than once a week, so I preferred getting the veggies and fruit I would need for those later in the week recipes when I needed them, later in the week. Course now I have a great market at the end of my street so I this is more convenient, but unfortunately too often lately I have done my menu planning by day, frequently choosing what to make while I was standing in that market. It really is much better for my budget when I do the advanced planning.

Back to the soup!

This recipe is actually for a slow cooker soup, which I will attempt to do the next time I make it as I do plan to make it again, however I made it on the stove top. It was a bit spicy (though neither of the children were interested in any food, so it didn't matter) but very flavorful and hearty. The instructions didn't say anything about cutting the snow peas, so I didn't, but next time I would slice them up into smaller pieces to make them easier to eat, and I think I would also add some julienned carrots.

It wasn't exactly my favorite soup, Pho, but it was fairly close. Try this instead of chicken noodle the next time your family is under the weather and in need of some warming, comfort food.