Culinary conundrums, & other kitchen adventures

Conflicting diets
Two of our friends are vegan.  I'm headed in the opposite direction--I've cut way back on beans, which we used to eat for dinner several nights a week, because I'm trying to, er, reduce my gas consumption, so to speak.  :)

I'm also having dietary disagreements with my sister.  She can't eat either herbs or spices, and cooks just about everything with fresh onion and garlic.  I, on the other hand, no longer cook with either onions or garlic--um, see above.  I like to make light of it by punning with my sister that, due to her problems with "particulates," she's now a whole-foods person.  :)

Homemade chicken soup
This all becomes very relevant now that we're trying to get back in the habit of cooking our own fleishigs (meat, which, in Jewish law, includes poultry), rather than throwing away our money on kosher take-out.  A couple of weeks ago, my husband did the honors.  His chicken soup was decent, but shvach (bland).  So I tried cooking it longer.  I don't think mine is any less bland.  This is what happens when you cook chicken soup to suit conflicting diets--all we used were carrots and celery, because those are the only soup ingredients I could think of that both my sister and I can eat.  But the longer cooking time made all the chicken fall off the bones, so we threw a good deal of it right back into the soup, and joked that maybe we should have some soup with our chicken.  :)