The Best Soup I've Made Yet

Last night I made the best homemade chicken noodle soup I've made yet.

The recipe came from my sister in law, Heather, though I can't confess to know where she picked it up from. I've put it on here in the past, but last night I decided to do something just a shade different. Ever see how those chefs on The Food Network take a healthy pinch of kosher salt and sprinkle it in their dishes? Well I did that before I boiled the chicken. Oh...it was perfection in a pot. The salt really sharpened the flavor of the chicken broth and had a great influence on the noodles.

I spent most of the day running errands in Roanoke. I was flying solo, which is a pretty rare event, so I spent a couple of quality hours in the bookstores perusing the shelves. I came home with a wedding photography book for Bethany as an early anniversary present that looks pretty interesting (which means I'll probably be reading it too).

Speaking of wedding photography, we're on the last week of our October wedding crush. We've successfully shot three weddings so far this month and we have a wedding in Vinton that promises to be very photogenic. So much so that we're bringing in a friend to add to the shoot and so we can train someone as a back up in case one of us ever gets sick or just wants to take a break from it.

Sunday I'll be leading the first outing of the Alleghany Camera Club at Roaring Run beginning at 4 p.m. The weather looks promising and I'm hoping we'll have a little more color to enjoy by then. I'm hoping to be able to snag a few outdoor photographs to place in the "Needs Processed" pile to shake things up a bit.

Judging by our shooting schedule we'll be polishing off the last of the fall portrait sessions by the sixth of November. Bethany and I are planning to take a little vacation the following week (to where exactly we haven't decided) and after than I'm hoping that I'll be able to settle back in and spend some quality time on my writing projects and perhaps even pick up another tune or two on the guitar.

I'm definitely hoping to get some more reading done as well. I've stumbled into a pretty rich vein of fall books. My current read is a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novel called Hollow Men that is so intense that it almost feels like watching an episode. After that I'm thinking I'll get to James Patterson's Kiss The Girls, his second Alex Cross mystery novel, and then Dragons of the Hourglass Mage by long time favorites Weis & Hickman to round out the fall.

And by then it'll be time for all the holiday food....