Dear Folks, Yesterday I knew that I had just run out of egg salad on crackers for lunch and had to put together a big pot of chicken soup, my favorite. I thawed out the four chicken drum sticks I had bought (on sale) for the purpose, got a pot of water to boiling, dropped the chicken in and added vegetables, spices and such. I let the pot simmer for about 1-1/2 hours until the meat fell off the drum sticks. I then removed the drum sticks to cool off. In the meantime I had put together a mixture of water and flour into a jar and shook the daylights out of it. When I thought the flour had been absorbed by the water I dumped it all into the boiling broth. But whoa! something was wrong. My proportion of flour to water was way off and I ended up with big lumps the size of small dumplings in my soup. Not only that, but the soup was so thick you could eat it with a fork. Well today was another day. Last night I had refrigerated all of it and today it was time to remove all the meat from the bones. When I had accomplished that and dumped the chicken into the broth with the vegetables, it made the soup thicker than ever. Although I knew that I could thin it out with plain water I was afraid it would dilute the flavor. But ah HAH! I came up with the notion that if I'd boil up the chicken bones and scraps and let them simmer, I'd come up with a good chicken broth to add to the soup. I let the bones and salted water simmer for about an hour, it sure smelled good, I strained it and added it to the thick soup in my pot. As I stirred the broth into the soup, I knew that I ended up with a pot of real chicken soup. I may have ended up with a chicken soup that I'd be embarrassed to serve to company (what with the strange small flour dumplings) but I know darned well I'll love every spoonful of it. vee