it wasn't perfect

i love chicken. and i hate wasting even the smallest bits of it. a few days ago, roommate made an el pollo loco run and i greedily held on to my leftover bones. this afternoon i rendered the last bits of meat off of those bones, boiling them for about an hour in about 3 cups of water in my zojirushi electric skillet with about 1t of dried oregano and a few shakes of cinnamon. i used a slotted spoon to get the bones out of the rendering water and then added two low sodium chicken broth packets from trader joe's, making sure it was all combined. i replenished the evaporated water and while the temperature was rising, in a separate dish i beat a single egg and then added 1/2c lemon juice. once the temp of the soup was hot, i removed one ladle-full and added it to the egg-lemon juice, quickly stirring. then i added it all back into the soup. then i added about a handful of rice and added a bit more oregano and cinnamon to suit my tastes.

you may recognize this as greek lemon chicken soup. and as delicious as it was (particularly with a mexican bolillo roll (which is like a french roll)), it wasn't perfect. the darn egg curdled when it hit the hot liquid. now, i've made this soup before, so i know the egg and lemon juice typically disburses throughout the soup, thickening it. i think the egg curdled because it and the lemon juice were coming straight from the fridge. but, anyway, the point is that it wasn't perfect. and that's ok. it still tasted good, i still made use of the last bits of some chicken, and i made it.

over the years i've noticed some newcomers to simplicity lament that they couldn't find another use for this or that that experiment didn't quite work out. maybe it's time to color outside the lines a bit just to have the experience. it wasn't perfect, but it was good.