Chicken and Vegetable Soup with Dumplings

I figured after almost four weeks of being sick now, and since I can't seem to eat much of anything, that it was about time I made a chicken soup.  When I brought up chicken and dumpling soup, Dylan got extremely excited, so I figured we should make it together.

We started off by placing a whole uncooked chicken in a pot with about four cups of water and some chicken bouillon cubes and brought to a boil.  I reduced the heat until just simmering, added some chopped carrots, celery, fennel, potatoes, gold bell peppers and spring onions. This was covered and cooked for just over an hour, until the chicken was fully cooked.  About thirty minutes into cooking the chicken and veggie mixture I added some broccoli and cauliflower (this way it wouldn't over cook and become mushy).

When the soup was done, we took the chicken out and let it rest for about ten minutes, until it was cool enough so that we could separate the chicken from the bone and skin and tear into bite sized pieces.  We then made the dumplings, with a little Bisquick, some milk, fresh parsley and black pepper.

The vegetables were brought back up to a simmer and Dylan added the dumplings.  This was allowed to cook for about 10 minutes and then we added in the chicken.

I am really happy with the result. This chicken turned out so amazingly moist! It was falling off the bones and the pieces were pulling apart so easily!  I will definitely be making this chicken more often. As for the dumpling  soup, well, Dylan did a great job on the dumplings, they turned out perfect! This soup was a huge hit and after making a large pot even, it resulted in very little leftovers.  My favorite part, I was actually able to eat it! Yay!!!