Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon

Sundays and I have a weird love/hate relationship. I love Sunday because it's part of the weekend, usually the day for giving your body a rest after a fun Saturday. Sunday football, even though I honestly don't watch it, I like to have it on in the background while I peruse Pinterest, grade papers or whatever choice activity I have decided for myself. I hate Sunday at the same time though because it means another 5 days of work are coming up. Waking up at 5:40am, teaching all day, working out, taking care of home things, just to run out of time to get everything done and start the process all over again!

Today, I decided to use my Sunday to do a couple cooking experiments! I do love a good experiment, even though these weren't necessarily scientific...

First, I am working on losing weight and have decided to try to stick to eating soup for lunch during the week. Last week, I had Progresso Light Beef Pot Roast and Progresso Light Santa Fe Chicken soup. I decided though, that if I made my own soup, I could control more of the sodium in my meal. I scoured Pinterest and various other websites for a lunch soup that I would really enjoy eating. Then I remembered the Lemon Chicken Orzo soup from Panera that I absolutely LOVE! I decided I would recreate that. I found a recipe that was similar to what I had in mind, then changed it up to suit my tastes!

Homemade Panera Lemon Chicken Orzo Soup
Makes 8 1-cup servings

8 cups chicken broth
1 chicken breast
1 medium carrot, peeled and sliced thin
1/4 cup chopped spinach
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp oregano
1 Tbsp basil
1 cup orzo, dry
1/4 cup lemon juice

Place all ingredients, except lemon juice, into a large pot on the stove. Covered, bring to a boil over high heat. Once boiling, reduce heat to low and allow to simmer for 30 minutes while covered. Remove chicken, slice and return to pot. Add lemon juice and enjoy!

Lemon Chicken Orzo Soup in my new StayFit soup container!

You can add other veggies to your liking, such as celery, onion, mushrooms, green onions... also, I used chicken stock instead of broth as it had less sodium than the broth. Each 1-cup serving has roughly 130 calories, so eat up!

Tomorrow, I will post about my second cooking experiment I did today... egg muffins!