Last Saturday, I made a big roast chicken, and I've been picking at it all
week. I wasn't completely down to the bare bones, but I decided to do take
the meat off the bones and do something with the carcass.

The chicken had been butterflied, so the neck and giblets were languishing
in their own container in the fridge. I poured a little bit of olive oil
into a soup pot and started browning them over medium heat.

While the chicken pieces were browning, I chopped up a few onions, adding
them to the pot as soon as the chopping was finished. (I'm not
lightning-fast with a knife, but I get by.)

I let that mixture cook for a while, until the onions were well past
translucent, then I added the chicken carcass and the remnants of an open
carton of chicken stock.

Cooked the mixture for about half an hour, fished the giblets out, and had a
snack. Then I removed the rest of the bones from the stock.

Peeled several (three?) Yukon Gold potatoes which were just barely starting
to turn green, chopped them in varying sizes, and added them to the stock.
(My idea was that the small pieces would disintegrate and thicken the soup,
while the larger pieces would provide substance to the soup.)

Peeled, halved, and sliced four sunchokes, just because I was curious about
how they would taste in the soup. Cooked for about 45 minutes, and tested
the veggies for texture. They were tender but not falling apart. I was
startled at how much like artichokes the sunchokes tasted.

The soup was getting close, but I wanted it to be a little thicker and
richer, so I puréed half of it and added that back in. I added some soymilk
(just because I *had* soymilk. I also had skim milk, but I figured soymilk
would be richer. Besides, I had a half-baked and probably incorrect notion
that potatoes and soymilk complement each other nutritionally.)

Added salt, white pepper, and a lemon's worth of juice.

And there was much rejoicing.

Bob