Welcome to the last month of 2020 and the last recipe of the month for this year – Chicken and Rice Soup. When we start working on these recipes several years in advance, we never know what might be going on when the recipe is finally published. This recipe turned out to be very timely – just as 2020 has been a struggle for so many of us, this recipe was a struggle to get published.

This recipe started as a vague idea. My husband prefers chicken and rice soup to chicken noodle soup, so that seemed like a good place to start. Once this recipe began to take shape, it started having problems right away. I had trouble getting it to meet our nutrition guidelines, the cooking time was not working out right, and it kept coming out too thick or too thin. On top of that, my family was getting very tired of eating chicken and rice soup. Once I got to the point of scrapping the whole recipe, my colleague Julie stepped in and volunteered to start testing the recipe with her family. Between Julie and I (and our very patient families) we finally made this recipe work.

Now that I am a few years removed from the struggle of this recipe, I can tell you all of the things I love about it:

• It cooks in the slow cooker or the stove top. You can choose the method that works best for you.
• It is an entire meal in one bowl. It is filled with vegetables, whole grains, and protein.
• It freezes well. I have some of this soup in my freezer right now so that I can warm it up for lunch on a cold day.
• It tastes really good. This is the most important thing, in my opinion.

I hope you give this recipe a try as we finish out 2020.

Enjoy!