Quick & Easy Chicken Cheesy Soup

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Last week on Facebook and Twitter, I asked my fans to tell me one thing they enjoy about winter. (I needed a pick-me-up. I don’t enjoy being cold, and Seattle at this time of year is cold and wet and gloomy.) Several people said “snow.”

That did nothing for me.

Someone else said curling up with a good book next to a roaring fire. Now we were getting somewhere. As you might imagine, I do love a good book. But still, I’d rather read that good book in the summer, when the days are long and the skies are blue.

Finally, one of my Twitter followers said that what she enjoys about winter is a bowl of thick soup. I perked up. Most of the year, I’m not into soup. I could take it or leave it. But on a cold winter day, a nice, thick soup warms me up from the inside out.

Unfortunately, by this time, it was already getting close to dinner. I wasn’t willing to put off the soup for another day. I needed to find something good about winter now, darn it! So I came up with a recipe for a hearty, delicious soup that took just half an hour from start to finish.

How is that possible? Because the soup is only sort of homemade. There are so many cans of food in it that I thought about naming it Can-Can Chicken Soup.

I settled on the name Quick & Easy Chicken Cheesy Soup because rhyming is fun.

Recipe: Quick and Easy Chicken Cheesy Soup

1 whole rotisserie chicken
1 can cheddar cheese soup
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 can of corn or Mexicorn
1 can diced green chilies
1 can of diced tomatoes
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 can chicken broth
1 T cumin
1 T chili powder
2 C milk

Tear the meat off the chicken bones, chop, and put into a heavy-bottomed soup pot with the accumulated juices from the chicken. Stir in all remaining ingredients. (Don’t drain any of the cans except for the black beans. Just open them up and add them to the pan, juices and all.) Heat over medium-low heat, stirring frequently.

This recipe can be made in the slow cooker. Just toss all the ingredients in a slow cooker and heat on low until warm all the way through.