Arrived home early this morning after a tsunami evacuation pulled us out of our beds last night. Battled some pretty crazy traffic to get to a friend’s house were we camped out on her fourth floor balcony which happened to have a lovely view of the now deserted Kailua-Kona harbor. Also an even lovelier view of a beautifully full Hawaiian moon shimmering on some VERY CALM WATER. So yeah, false alarm. No tsunami, not even an over-sized ripple on our side of the island. But a sleepless night out-of-doors at least yielded some lovely star-gazing and two more constellations checked off our list. Our little adventure left us all pretty out-of-sorts today and in need of some soothing comfort-food. My boys’ all-time favorite soup is a home-made version of Italian Wedding Soup made from spinach, chicken, and those tiny Acini Pepe pasta balls. However, in keeping with our astronomy theme I substituted the pasta balls for Stelline Pasta Stars. That, and a long afternoon nap should have us back to our old-selves.

Celestial Soup Recipe

1. Boil your left-over $4.99 Costco rotisserie chicken carcass in 8 cups water till it falls apart and you have a nice chicken stock. Let cool then pick out ALL the bones leaving all the little chunks of chicken in the stock (a great job for little hands).
2. Boil 1/2 box of Stelline Pasta Stars (or Acini Pepe Pasta Balls) in 8 cups water, drain.
3. Add 1 cube chicken bullion, 1 tsp. fresh grated nutmeg, 1 tsp. fresh ground pepper
and the pasta to chicken stock and chicken.
4. Chop up and saute in 1 TBSP Olive oil a good sized bunch of Kale, spinach or chard with a little sea salt just till tender then add to everything else.
5. Add water to desired thinness. We like it thick rather than brothy.
6. Serve with baguette and butter or in this case Costco Parmesan bagel halves smeared with homemade macadamia nut and basil pesto topped with sliced tomatoes and mozzarella then toasted in oven till cheese bubbles. Yumm.