April 20 – 26, 2026

Monday:                  Melissa Clark’s Chopped Salad made with all the great food piling up in the refrigerator

Tuesday:                  Avgolemono-ish Chicken Noodle Soup

Wednesday:          Pasta with Leeks (no picture, but above is the potato salad with chick peas that we had on Thursday)

Thursday:                Grilled Brats and Potato Salad (the brat dressed with onions, kraut, mustard and conrnichons

Friday:                     Shrimp Tacos (Alas, no tacos, but above are crostini – Avocado and Sea Salt and Brie, Chutney and Apples

Saturday:                Composite Margherita / Olive and Anchovy Pizza

Sunday:                   Chicken Chemuin with Roasted Potatoes, Parsley Sauce and a Salad of Kale, Walnuts and Apples

Lemons and Aristotle

Italians from places in Italy other than the Amalfi Coast have been known to refer to Greeks as lemon addicts.  This seems to stem from Greeks wanting to flavor everything, including iconic* Italian dishes, like beans and greens and many pastas with lemon juice.

*[The observant among you will have noticed that I used a word derived from Greek, “iconic,” to modify Roman cuisine.  This is as inevitable as using French phrases (‘a la carte,’ for example) on English menus, and for the same reason:  the practical, legalistic Romans got most of their philosophical and aesthetic ideas from the Greeks, just as we got much of our cooking terminology from the French – I blame Thomas Jefferson.]

I remember – this a pure digression – being on the Amalfi Coast, with its Greek-like weather and rocky shoreline, and seeing a large yellow fruit that looked to me like an elongated grapefruit.  It was a lemon and it was nearly the size of a volleyball.

Back to the story-line:  As the Greeks and the Amalfi-coasters might say – when God gives you lemons, make lemonade or beans and greens or, as we did last week, make Avgolemonish Chicken Soup.  Avgo means ‘egg’ in Greek and lemon (well, lemoni) means lemon.  And the Greeks made some very bright and savory soups which use lemon but temper it with an infusion of beaten egg to add some heft and turn down the acidity, hence ‘avgolemono.’  The egg also provides a richness similar to milk or cream, but without the dairy.  And Lidey Heuck uses this technique to fine effect in the soup we cooked last week. 

Lidey ‘Americanizes’ the soup, so that you probably couldn’t get anything exactly like it on your next trip to Greece (please take me with you), but if you served this to a visitor from the home of Western philosophy and democracy, they would appreciate it.

Note:  I call Greece the ‘home of Western philosophy,’ with a caveat.  The more we learn about Eastern Philosophy, indeed, about language origin and ancient science, the more difficult we find it to separate East from West.  It’s easy to see the difference between the two today – but parts of the ancient Hindu Vedas sound very Jewish and Christian, and paper and noodles come from China, and peppers, prevalent in all eastern cuisines, come from Central America, and gunpowder, with which, in its improved form and new weaponry, the Europeans subdued the great Chinese Empire, was invented in China, and the Chinese won the majority of trick skiing and snowboarding events at the Olympics, and India produces more lemons than Italy or Mexico or the U.S., and, well you get the idea.  Now have a nice bowl of soup and think ecumenically.

Avgolemono-ish Chicken Noodle Soup

(adapted from Lidey Heuck – Cooking in Real Life)

Timing:                  90 minutes (30 minutes if using a rotisserie chicken)

Ingredients:

2 bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts (about 12 ounces each) or a rotisserie chicken

1 ½ cups small-diced carrots

1 ½ cups small-diced celery

1 large yellow onion, chopped

3 cups baby spinach

3 quart chicken broth

1 cup ditalini, acini di peppe, or pearl couscous – we used the couscous

15 oz. can of chickpeas, drained

¼ cup minced dill or parsley, plus more for garnish

3 large egg yolks

½ cup fresh lemon juice

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil plus extra for dressing the soup

Kosher salt and ground black pepper

Prep:

Preheat oven to 350 F and line a sheet pan with parchment paper

Pat the chicken breasts dry, place on the sheet pan and drizzle olive oil over them, then sprinkle with ½ teaspoon of salt and some ground pepper.  Transfer to the oven and roast until just cooked through – about 35 minutes with large breasts.

Dice the carrots and celery and chop the onion and gather or measure out the other ingredients.

Separate the three yolks.

When the chicken is cooked, set it aside to cool until you can handle it and tear the meat into bite-sized pieces.  Discard skin and bones.

Cook:

In a large pot or Dutch oven, heat the olive oil over medium until shimmering, then add the carrots, celery and onion and cook, stirring form time to time, until onion is translucent and vegetables beginning to soften – 10 minutes or a bit less.

Add the broth, 1 tablespoon of salt and 1 teaspoon of pepper and bring to a boil over medium-high, then reduce and cook at a vigorous simmer until broth is a bit reduced and the vegetables are tender – 10 minutes or so.

Now add the pasta and the chickpeas and cook, stirring from time to time, until just heated through.  Take off the heat.

In a medium bowl, whisk the egg yolks with the lemon juice and then, whisking constantly, slowly pour a ladleful of hot broth into the mixture – repreat about 3 more time, until the mixture is warm to the touch.  Now, stirring constantly, gradually add the egg mixture into the soup.  The reason for going slow here is to avoid cooking the eggs.

Add the spinach and dill to the soup and stir until the spinach wilts.  Taste and correct seasoning and serve hot – garnishing with extra dill and some black pepper.  Drizzle with olive oil, if you wish – SWMBO does not approve of this practice.