Chicken Foot Soup Most folks today wouldn't bother with this soup - you actually have to put the whole chicken in the soup - everything but the feathers. That includes the feet! It's hard to find a chicken with its feet still attached these days unless you can find a Kosher kitchen, or grow your own chickens. If you can't find a Kosher butcher and can't grow your own chickens, order your soup chicken several days ahead of time. Ask for two pair of chicken feet. I'm not sure what it is, but there's something in the feet that gives the soup a rich golden color and an incredibly good taste. This recipe is adapted, by the way, from a booklet given to Grandma by a bank when she opened a checking account there many years ago. She doesn't remember the name of the book or the person who wrote it, although she says she's changed the recipe enough so its own Maker wouldn't recognize it! Here are the ingredients: 1 5-lb stewing hen, cut up 4 chicken feet 3 medium-sized carrots, peeled but left whole 3 medium-sized onions, peeled but left whole 1 2- to 3- inch celery root, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks 2 parsnips, peeled and cut into quarters 1 6-inch zucchini squash, peeled and cut into ½-inch disks ¼ lb fresh mushrooms, cleaned and sliced or chopped 1 clove of garlic, peeled but left whole 1 tbsp salt ¼ tsp pepper ½ tsp each of cilantro, rosemary, thyme, oregano, basil, and/or marjoram; or season to your own taste 12 cups cold water (but you may have to add more if it boils down too fast) a pot of scalding hot water - to dip the chicken and the feet into so they'll be easier to peel Here are the instructions: Dip the chicken in scalding water for about 15 minutes to make it easier to get the skin off. If the chicken has a lot of fat on it, peel as much of it off as you can to keep from having to skim it all off later. Set a pot of water on the stove to get scalding hot, and while it's heating, singe the feathers off the chicken feet by spearing them with a meat utility fork and holding them over an open flame, then scrub the feet in lukewarm water with a stiff brush. Put the feet in the scalding hot water for about 15 minutes, then you can peel the skin off em pretty easy. Toss everything but the mushrooms into the 12 cups of water, bring it to a rolling boil, and skim off any froth that collects. Cover and cook all this stuff over a very low heat or in a crockpot for about 4 hours, or until the chicken is tender enough to fall off the bones. Then strain the soup and save the chicken pieces, but throw away the feet and the vegetables. This is okay cause all the nutrients and flavor are in the soup now. If ya like, open a package of mixed corn, greenbeans, lima beans, carrots, and peas, and toss a bunch in for color and interest. While the chicken is cookin, you have time to make the noodles, too. Of course, you could use store-bought, but they don't taste nearly as good. For the noodles, you need 2 cups of flour, 4 large (very large) eggs, and 2 tablespoons of ice water. Sift the flour twice, and on the last sifting, let it pile up in the bowl, then make a little hole in the mountain to break the eggs in and drop the ice water in. Stir it from the middle until it's just slightly mixed - you'll have to knead it until you have a stiff dough. Divide the dough in half and put one half on a floured board. Roll it out until it is about 1/16th of an inch thick, put it on a towel, and let it set for about half an hour. Do the same thing to the other piece of dough. Fold each sheet of dough into three or four thicknesses and then cut it into the size noodles you want. Be sure you use a very sharp knife to do this, and you might want to dip the knife in hot water between cuts to keep it from getting too sticky. When they are all cut up, spread em out and let em dry for another half hour, then drop em into the chicken soup. Cook em until they are tender. After you've drained the soup, put the broth back on the stove and bring it to a rolling boil before dropping the noodles into it. Put the chopped or sliced mushrooms in at the same time. Check the noodles for doneness after 15 minutes... it will take longer to cook home-made noodles than to cook store-bought noodles cause they are thicker. If you drop a package of frozen mixed veggies into the broth at the same time you put the noodles in, it may take a bit longer to cook the noodles through. This soup goes really great with a tossed salad or a grilled-cheese sandwich, but it's great all by itself, too. If you don't want to bother with the noodles and veggies, add the mushrooms about 15 minutes before you're ready to eat. Mix up a few tablespoons of flour in ice-cold milk, and stir it with a whisk til there are no lumps in it. Add the mixture to the boiling soup and stir frantically until it thickens to keep it from getting all lumpy again. This will give you a nice cream of chicken foot soup!