Pita and Quick Chicken Noodle Soup Recipe

 I saw a recipe for fail proof pita that I just had to try.  I seem to have trouble getting my pita to puff. This one guarantees puffy pita.

 Mix 1 tablespoon of instant rise yeast in 1-1/4 cup of water.  Add 1 tsp. of salt and 3-1/2 cups of flour.  Knead until you have a smooth ball of dough.

 Depending on the size of the pitas you want, divide your dough.  I divided mine into 8 pieces.  I made double the recipe which is why you are seeing more.

 Roll each piece out to 1/4 inch thickness.  Do not roll them too thin.  Place them on a parchment covered cookie sheet and allow them to rise for 45 minutes.

 Bake them on a pizza stone in a 425 degree oven for 15 minutes. Cool on a rack.  Some of mine did not rise as much as I wanted but I realized I rolled them too thin.  So make sure you roll them no thinner than 1/4 inch.

 Last night at 8:30, I got a call from The Blog Tech telling me his girlfriend has an awful cold and could I make her some chicken noodle soup.  Since that is almost my bedtime, all I could do was throw some stuff into my slow cooker and finish it first thing this morning.  I had some frozen chicken thighs, so I threw about 5 of them in.  I added the little bit of celery I had (it was too dark to venture down to the lower gardens to pick any), about 4 carrots, 1 onion cut in half, rosemary, thyme and some bay leaves.  Then I covered it with some homemade chicken stock.  I also added some cracked black pepper.  I went to bed and kept waking up all night smelling something cooking in my kitchen and finding it strange that I was not there.

 The next morning I had a wonderful pot of tasty goodness to work with.  I strained out the solids, flaked the chicken and boiled some good Amish noodles for about half of their cooking time.

I enriched the stock with some Knorr's concentrated stock and added the noodles and chicken.  Wow!  This made really good chicken noodle soup with very little effort.