I am not a huge fan of cleaning but occasionally I’ll go on a tear and want to clean everything. This weekend SL and I focused on a couple rooms in the house and cleaned all of the windows, inside and out.

Last night, I decided to tackle the pantry/refrigerator and because it has been so cold and raw outside I thought making a soup would be a great way to warm me up and get rid of bits and piece of things in the pantry and the refrigerator.

Here is what I found for my soup:

• Chicken stock
• Celery (I love using the leafy part in soups, gives a huge amount flavor)
• A small handful of mushrooms
• Baby carrots
• Chickpeas
• Garlic
• A seriously small amount of Orzo (who leaves that small of an amount in the box…probably me)
• Left over chicken sausage (roughly two links)
• Green onions
• Chia seeds (I had never done this before but Google said it said it was ok so I went with it)
• Can of diced tomatoes (Garlic and onion flavored because I’m crazy like that)

The best part about soups is they are extremely versatile. You can throw almost anything into a soup pot and it will be delicious. Except watermelon, but it was delicious to eat while making soup!

This personal watermelon did not have an optimal rind to deliciousness ratio but it still tasted great…while it lasted. Back to my soup.

I chopped the celery, carrots and garlic and put them in a pre-heated pot with a bit of olive oil. I let them cook just enough so they softened up a bit. Then I added the chicken sausage, mushrooms and green onion and cooked them all together for a few more minutes. Next I added the chickpeas and the can of diced tomatoes (including the juice), gave it all a stir and began to add the broth.

No part of soup making is an exact science so do what you feel is right when it comes to the ingredients and how long you want things to cook. I brought my pot-of-goodness up to a boil and added the orzo. Normally, soup recipes tell you to add already cooked pasta to the pot but I am not normal and I don’t like to do that so my UNCOOKED orzo went into the boiling pot for about 10 minutes.

When the orzo looked done, I took the pot off the heat and stirred in some chia seeds. When I say some I mean about a small palm full. I have never added chia seeds to soup so I aired on the side of caution in case these little seeds made my soup gross (they didn’t).

Obviously by the time everything was finished I was STARVING an I did not wait for it to cool to a decent temperature before eating. I immediately dug in and thoroughly enjoyed each scalding bite!