A HAPPY ACCIDENT

Happy Accidents really do happen.

After nearly a week off from work, I wanted to use up the leftover roasted chicken I made for munching during that week, and the chicken stock I had on hand after making that roasted chicken.  I roasted it with lots of herbs, lemons and salt and pepper.  It was really good in the Chicken Pasta Salad I ate all week, full of diced pears, dried cherries and lots of seasonings.    But there was still some chicken left, and that chicken  stock. 

So I pulled it all together in a soup pot and started raiding the vegetable drawer and the freezer.  A packet of frozen mashed cauliflower (it thickened my soup beautifully) a packet of frozen spaghetti squash, a few fresh carrots sliced up, a small zucchini diced up into smallish pieces, two spring onions from the garden, and 4 spears of asparagus picked this afternoon diced into small pieces.   Use up everything!

After I got it all into the pot and started stirring everything, I couldn't see the pieces of spaghetti squash.  ???  Where are they?  A minute or two of wondering what happened, I realized I had used a packet of coconut rice pudding I made about two or three months ago - not spaghetti squash!!  Well, the rice was certainly okay in the soup, but coconut and vanilla!!!  Ugh!  They were the same color and so sure of myself, I didn't label the packet they were in.  (Needless to say I was WRONG and I was NOT going to throw the whole thing out!

Coconut rice pudding in Chicken Soup! What a blunder!  But wait!  I know that Thai food uses a lot of coconut in its cuisine.  So I went in that direction.  I started adding lots of other ingredients.  Sesame oil, red pepper flakes, and I had some sheets of Nori - that stuff you use to wrap sushi rolls, and cut them up into small pieces and tossed into the pot as well.  Corn.  I found a packet of  corn cut from the cob that I froze last summer, so that went into the pot as well.  Sweet and savory!

So the whole point of today's blog is creativity!!  All I can say is that if you aren't afraid to experiment, disastrous mistakes can turn into very Happy Accidents~ ~