Artichoke and Watercress Soup

In honor of my first day of work and my still-sore throat, I decided to make a warm soup chock full of veggies.  The recipe came from Forever Young by Nicholas Perricone.

To make, I started with 28 ounces of chicken stock (a little less than the bottle pictured), and a quarter cup of rice.  I brought it to a boil and let it simmer for about twenty minutes.

Meanwhile, I had two giant jars of artichoke hearts.  I used a little less than half a jar, and rinsed off the hearts so they wouldn't be so oily.  I put them in my magic bullet (the little blender thing), along with the juice of a lemon (roll it around first -- it will juice way easier) and two eggs.  I blended this into a puree.

Once the rice was done cooking, I spooned half of it and about a quarter of the liquid into the puree inside the blender, and reblended everything.  Be careful with hot liquids because I am pretty sure they expand in a blender and I have had everything explode on me before.

After that, pour the puree back into the rice/chicken mixture and now you heat it up.  This was tricky because I rarely use thermometers while cooking, and the recipe was very adamant that the temperature needed to be 160 degrees and should not boil.  I think this was so the egg would cook properly.  I started out slow and kept the temperature really low (about a two on my oven dial).  You are supposed to stir constantly too.  To be honest, I got a bit tired of stirring so much, and stirring on and off every minute or so worked fine.  I also upped the temp, which caused it to start to bubble a tiny bit, but it turned out great.

In addition -- I just used a meat thermometer to take the temperature of the soup and that worked perfectly.

After that, I added a tablespoon and a half of chopped dill, as well as a whole bunch of chopped watercress.  Watercress is awesome because I get it still attached to the root, and it stays fresh, lasts forever, and has a really strong peppery flavor.

After that, the soup is done!  I let it sit for a little bit and it thickened up even more.  The soup is really great if you love artichokes.  I actually started to like it more the more I ate it, because it took me a little bit to get used to the artichoke flavor.  I also thought the dill would be stronger than it was, so don't worry about adding too much dill.

Finally, the soup is good with lots of pepper and also tasted  with flax seed sprinkled over it.

In other news, I found my old playboy bunny toe ring.  The "bunny" isn't usually my style, but for some reason I love this toe ring, so I have been rocking it a lot :)

And on the work front, things were fantastic.  Top two favorite things?  Cheap soup and salad (bye bye U of I charging out the ass per ounce of salad), as well as probably one of the most photogenic pictures of me ever for my ID!

PS I may be alone on this, but I am loving Teen Wolf! I think it is going to get really juicy, really fast.  Perfect guilty temptation.  Anyone else watching it??