Couscous Lemon Chicken Soup

I was recently in the Chicago area visiting friends and Cindy and I went shopping, of course. "Would I like to go into the William Sonoma store?" Silly question, how quickly can we get there. If you have never been to one, you are in for a treat. The price points are kind of high on most of the products but then you are looking at top of the line, in most cases. Still it is a great place for ideas. This day they were making a soup that had us asking for one more bite, please. As usually happens I take their recipe and tweak it to what we can eat or sounds good to me. So, I will leave it to you. Sandi, I know that you are gluten intolerant so you will have to work around if you try this one. Couscous is an African pasta of sorts, originally made from millet but lately from wheat flour. This soup used a Lebanese Couscous which just means that it a bit larger around than an orzo pasta or pearl pasta. Den thinks Barley would work but he is in love with barley. I got out my handy crock pot and set a carton of Chicken stock to heating. I set 2 quarts of water to boil to cook the 1 cup of dry couscous, remember it is a type of paste and takes about 5 minutes to boil to cooked enough for this soup. Drain it off and add it to the stock. In a heavy skillet combine and cook to soft but not brown 2 tbsp. EVOO 1/2 small onion, chopped 2 cloves of garlic, chopped, crushed or minced This is where I start to deviate, OK. I trimmed an entire skinless/boneless chicken breast and cut it into cubes. I added this to the onion and garlic in the skillet to get it started cooking. Back to the crock pot: 1 tbsp butter 3 tbsp fresh parsley finely chopped 3 tbsp. fresh cilantro (not in the package recipe but I added it) 3 tbsp. fresh coriander (I couldn't find this one so I didn't put it in) 1 tbsp. fresh mint, chopped (not available so not in there) rind of 1 lemon finely grated (just the rind here, don't get that white stuff undernieth, it doesn't taste nice at all, this is where a micro plane comes in handy, but watch the finger, it is very sharp) Juice from the same lemon. Salt and Pepper to taste. Add in the mixture in the skittet to the crock pot and I cooked it for about 1.5 hours on high. The couscous will finish cooking and swell to about twice the size. I came down with a cold while we were away and this feels great to a "stuffy sicky". God Bless and hugs, Linda