We had a similar cooking experience yesterday. My Betterhalf started with chicken legs in our dutch oven and browned the chicken, added water and cooked until cooked through. She removed the chicken and let cool. She then added onion, carrot, and celery into the "stock". Once the vegetables were tender, she blended them with an immersion blender. I cut up a buttercup squash, garlic, and some celery (including some of the inner leaves). I cooked the squash, garlic, and celery in a skillet to get a little color on the squash and start them cooking. We pulled the chicken from the bones and added the squash, celery, and chicken back into the soup base. I added some prepared chicken stock and seasoned the soup. Back in the skillet I added a little butter and cooked a rice and quinoa mixture. Once browned I added some water and a little chicken stock to the rice and boiled it for about 10 minutes. I added the rice to the soup. Cooked the soup until the squash and rice were cooked through.