Chicken and Meatball Soup

Over the past couple weeks a winter cold has been making the rounds in our house.  The best remedy for a cold is homemade chicken soup.  There have actually been studies done on this and they show that the homemade kind with vegetables works the best.  Every time I roast a chicken or turkey I boil the carcass with some veggies and pop the strained broth into the freezer so that I always have it on hand for a quick meal.  Make sure you pull all the little pieces of meat off the carcass though and put that in the broth before freezing.
                                                                    
Ingredients:

12 cups homemade chicken broth with meat
5 stalks celery chopped (leaves too)
2 cups baby carrots sliced
3 cloves garlic diced
1 yellow onion chopped
1 cup chopped mushrooms
2 bay leaves
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp fresh ground black pepper
1 cup frozen spinach or 2 cups fresh

Meatballs:

1 lb ground chicken or turkey
1/4 cup flaxseed meal
1 egg
Sea salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste


Method:

1)   If you are using frozen broth put the whole chunk into a large pot on medium high heat to thaw and heat up.
2)  Mix the ground chicken or turkey with the flaxseed meal, egg, salt and pepper.  Roll into tiny meatballs about the size of the tip of your thumb.  This is tedious and I tend to end up making them bigger than this but it is worth it.  Somehow the soup is better when there are more tiny little meatballs than when there are less and larger ones.  Set aside for now.
3) Chop all the veggies while you are waiting for the broth to come to a boil.
4) Toss the meatballs and bay leaves into the boiling broth first and simmer until the meatballs are cooked (no longer pink) about 30 minutes.
5) Add  the remaining ingredients, bring back to a boil and simmer for another 30 - 40 minutes.  If you are using fresh spinach leave this out until the last 10 - 15 minutes of cooking.

Serve up steaming bowls of this wonderful healing soup with some Paleo Flax Bread.  My son loves this soup and there is always lots left over for lunches so he takes it in a thermos for a few days.

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