Short On...? Carry On, Part Two: Breaking the Soup Rules

The best soups in the world may be made with bones and the ends of vegetables, but not all of us have those things all the time. You too can make soup, which as others before me have pointed out, is just wet food.

But even wet food tastes better with some stuff in it to give it a) ballast and b) flavour. These are some soups created and eaten by the Treehouse squirrels over the past many years. I've chosen the ones with the shortest and/or most flexible ingredient lists.

It Appears to Be Soup

Ingredients: 4 cups of chicken stock, 2 cups of water, 1/2 cup green lentils simmered in the stock/water, then some cooked rice, leftover chopped potato, and frozen mixed vegetables added and cooked until it was soup. 

Directions: Simmer it all together. You know it's soup when it stops looking like a potful of water with vegetables and lentils floating in it.


"We Are Never Going to Use This Coleslaw Mix" Soup

Ingredients: 1 bag pre-shredded cabbage, carrots, barley, canned pinto beans, sloppy joe seasoning (homemade mixture), and a few lentils (since we had them)

Directions: Simmer it all together.


Freezer Minestrone

Ingredients: Several small containers of leftover pasta sauce and beans that had accumulated in the freezer, along with a box of chicken broth, a bit of frozen spinach, a bit of pasta, and a few mushrooms.

Directions: Simmer it all together.


Sort of Mexican Soup

Ingredients: Leftovers from the Hillbilly Housewife's Lentil-Rice Taco Stuffing; enough water or broth to make it soupy; one can pinto beans, drained; some frozen corn, half a cup or so of salsa. 

Directions: Simmer it all together. Add corn and salsa near the end of cooking.


Lentil Soup Isn't So Bad 

Ingredients: 3 cups chicken broth plus an equal amount water; Some green lentils--maybe half to two-thirds of a cup dry; 2 carrots, sliced; 1/2 bunch celery, including some leaves, sliced; salsa 

Directions: Rinse the lentils and check for pebbles. Bring the broth and water to a boil, and add the lentils and vegetables. Turn down the heat and simmer until the lentils are soft enough to eat and the vegetables are cooked. I poured in some mild salsa partway through--maybe half a cup, just enough to season it up and add a bit of onion and tomato.  Add more water if it needs it as it's cooking.


Dead-easy Navy Bean Soup (slow cooker) (Adapted from Saving Dinner by Leanne Ely)

Directions: Soak one pound navy beans (half a 900 gram bag) overnight.

When you get up in the morning, discard the soaking water.  Throw some frozen chopped onion, the beans, a couple of bay leaves, and 1 litre (quart) chicken or vegetable broth into the slow cooker, and turn it on high.
Later, when you're feeling more awake, add in sliced carrots and/or celery.  I didn't have celery so I put in some celery seed.  Keep the soup cooking all day, on high for part of the time if your day is getting short.  When the beans seem like they're pretty soft, add in salt and pepper; I also added a bit of cumin. Add a little water if it seems to need it, but don't add TOO much.

You can turn it off and let it sit for awhile before you eat, to let it thicken and cool a bit.


Slow Cooker Split Pea Soup We've Been Making Forever

Adapted from a recipe in The Perfect Basket, by Diane Phillips. Can be halved and cooked in a smaller slower cooker. If you don't have fresh vegetables, you can substitute frozen "spaghetti mix" vegetables (a mixture of onion, celery, and pepper).

Ingredients:

2 cups yellow split peas (one of the little bags from the grocery store)
1/2 cup brown rice (optional)
1 bay leaf
2 tsp. dried marjoram
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. white pepper (I didn't have any so I used black pepper)
1 quart chicken or vegetable broth plus more water as needed
Some chopped frozen onion
A couple of carrots, peeled and chopped
Three stalks of celery, chopped

If you weren't going to do this in the slow cooker, you could start by sauteing the vegetables in a bit of butter or oil, then adding the split peas, broth, and seasonings. I just put everything into the 3 1/2 quart slow cooker, adding water to fill it maybe three-quarters full. I set it on High for a few hours, then turned it to Low partway through the afternoon when it was bubbling hard. I think it would work fine to leave it on Low all day.

Hamburger Soup #1 

This is what I did: browned a pound of ground beef, drained off most of the fat, added in some chopped onion and celery and let them cook a few minutes.  Added a can of pasta sauce and several cans of water; when it boiled, I added a cupful of what the grocery store packaged as "soup mix." That is, a mixture of lentils, grains, and small beans.  I let that simmer for a couple of hours, stirring it to keep from sticking, adding water if it needed it.  You could probably do it in the slow cooker too. Later I added chopped zucchini, a few mushrooms, and pasta bowties, along with extra basil, oregano, garlic powder, salt and pepper.  That's it, and it made a lot. 


Hamburger Soup #2

This recipe is descriptive, not prescriptive: don't go cooking one potato to copy this.

Ingredients: 1 lb. extra-lean ground beef; splash of olive oil for flavour; salt, pepper; lots of sliced celery (or part onions); 3 fat, ripe tomatoes; 1 cup leftover pasta sauce and half a can tomato paste (plus maybe a cupful of water, or two cupfuls--depends on whether you want it to be more like stew or more like soup); 1 cooked potato and about a cupful of cooked yellow beans; 1 cupful frozen peas (add at the end)

Directions: In a large pot (I used a Dutch oven), brown the ground beef; drain if necessary but I didn't because there was almost no fat left in the pan. Add a little oil if necessary and add in the celery; cook until softened a bit. Add salt and pepper whenever you want. Add in tomato ingredients plus as much water as seems right, plus cut-up leftover vegetables. Mama Squirrel left the beans in nice long bean-sized pieces.

Bring it all to a boil, turn down and let simmer for about an hour. (Low enough so it doesn't burn, but just enough to bubble a bit.) Add the peas right at the end.

This doesn't have much seasoning in it (other than the salt, pepper, and what's in the pasta sauce) and you might think it's too bland; feel free to doctor it as you like.

Wednesday Hodgepodge: It's Chili Out

1. Where do you go when you need some inspiration?

Place, person, or thing? Pretty pictures of Hygge things, that would be Pinterest. Words of wisdom, ideas about dinner, or an opinion on whether something matches, that would be Mr. Fixit. A reminder that so many lives intertwine: online friends.

And don't forget books.

2. What's under your bed?

Storage baskets, spare bedding, and a Christmas tree.

3. Thursday, February 22nd is National Chili Day, National Margarita Day, and National Cook a Sweet Potato Day. Of the three which would you most like to celebrate? Is that likely?

I made white chicken chili on Tuesday, so I guess that counts.

Chicken Chili, adapted from "White Chili" on A Year of Slow Cooking

2 cups chicken broth
some chopped cooked chicken
1 can corn, drained
1 can pinto beans, drained
1 little can chopped green chilies (don't drain)
1 tbsp. lemon juice
1 tsp. cumin
1 tsp. chopped garlic (I used jarred garlic)
a little salt, pepper, and oregano, plus a spoonful of dried onion flakes

Combine in a pot, bring to a boil, turn down to low, and cook for about an hour. Serve with sour cream.

4. What are you 'snowed under' with right now?

Not exactly snowed under, but pretty busy with course work. It means I am not finding much time for blogging right now.

5. Tell us three to five things that make you feel balanced?

An interesting question, but I'm not sure of the answer(s). One would be Sunday worship in church, as a start/end to the week. Also having a mix of things to do, between working at home and going out.

6. Insert your own random thought here.

I'm halfway through the current 10 x 10 Wardrobe Challenge! 

And in relation to that, I did something yesterday that could be considered strange. After I finished my volunteer morning at the thrift store, I saw that the two blazers I donated recently, and that I had been feeling a bit regretful about, had been relegated to the 75% off rack. So I bought them back for $2 each. Better than sending them to be baled up and shipped off or turned into seat filling or whatever might have been their destination.

Linked from The Wednesday Hodgepodge at From Across the Pond.

What to do with that (some kitchen tips)

Bits and pieces...

1. If you have a few less-than-tasty apples, not rotten but lacking texture, it's easy to turn them into applesauce. Peel them, cut them up (no cores), and cook them in a slow cooker or on a low burner.  Cook till they're fairly soft, then mash them with the back of a spoon. The process by which mealy apples can be reconstituted into decent applesauce would make a great homeschool science lesson. (It's all about cells.)

2. If you have a cup of orange marmalade, you can mix it with soy sauce, ginger, and garlic to make a good cooking sauce for four pork chops. If you have half a cup, you can do two pork chops. We found the recipe in a freezer-cooking download from $5 Dinners, and it is the best orange sauce we've tried--way better than recipes using frozen orange juice. There are variations of the recipe all over the Internet, but it's basically a smaller version of this recipe on the Smucker's website (but with soy sauce instead of teriyaki sauce).

3. If you have a few small, slightly stale dinner rolls, you can slice them into thirds or quarters, spresd them with garlic butter, and toast them to go along with spaghetti or stew.

Fried rice: do it your own way (Do-Vember #18)

Do-Vember

In the freezer: cooked rice, spinach, diced onion. In the fridge: leftover beef, jarred garlic, mushrooms. Dinner: Fried Rice, from The More-With-Less Cookbook.

How did we do it our way?

1. No added eggs; Mr. Fixit can't eat them scrambled.

2. No leftover vegetables. We did have last night's carrots and beans to reheat on the side, but they wouldn't have added much to the rice. I added spinach and mushrooms instead.

3. I  cut the amount of sugar, salt and pepper in half, because I knew our leftovers weren't going to make a full recipe.

Still good!

What's for supper? Roast Beef Ratatouille

Isn't it funny when you can go back five years on your blog and find that you had almost the same fresh and leftover ingredients to use for supper?

Well, okay, not everyone can do that, but I got lucky with the leftovers. We might even have some cherry tomatoes in the garden.

What's for supper? Chicken Fajita Pizza

Chicken Fajita Pizza, partly done baking

How to make Chicken Fajita Pizza:

In the biggest (greased) pan you have that will fit the toaster oven, stretch half a recipe of pizza dough; that is, the amount you get if you use two cups of flour. I used a big casserole dish.

Spread with tomato sauce and leftover chicken fajita filling, chopped. I added another chopped pepper. Push the filling down so that the crust goes up the sides of the pan.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F, and start baking the pizza. Somewhere along the line, take it out and add grated cheese on top.

Keep baking until the crust is done and everything is heated through. You'll probably have to eat it with forks, but that's okay.

What's for supper?, and a muffin recipe

Tonight's dinner menu:

Chicken chili (from our freezer meals)
Salad: romaine hearts and broccoli slaw veggies (something easy to put together from the Giant Tiger produce shelf)
Go-withs: cheese, cottage cheese, mini rice cakes, things like that

Apple Maple Muffins

How do you make Apple Maple Muffins?

Start with last night's dessert: apples baked with a little homemade pancake syrup. Chop the apples small.

Combine dry ingredients for a regular batch of muffins: two cups flour, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 2 tsp. baking powder, 1/2 tsp. salt.  In another bowl or measuring cup, combine 1/2 cup oil, 1 egg, and about 3/4 cup milk. Combine the wet and dry ingredients along with the apples and any of their syrup. Add a little more liquid if needed. Spoon into paper-lined muffin cups and bake about 15 minutes at 375 degrees. They don't have to get too brown.

Wednesday Hodgepodge: Fly Me to the Hodgepodge

1. What's something that has recently 'tried your patience'?

Too many road closures because of construction. Too bad we can't fly over them (see, I worked it in).

2. Do you think patience comes to us naturally or is it something you have to learn as you grow? On a scale of 1-10 generally how patient are you? (1=I blow up at the drop of a hat and 10=I've got all the time in the world).

I am not very patient about the middles of things. I like to see ends, so I sometimes hurry the middles. I have had to learn to slow down and do whatever it takes so that the end doesn't fall apart. This is one reason I liked to make doll clothes for Lydia, when she was still enjoying her doll family: they got done a lot faster than people clothes.

People always think homeschooling parents must be extra-patient; I think it varies about as much as with the rest of the population. Sometimes you're patient, sometimes you're not; sometimes you need to be, sometimes you don't. With some kids, it's more about keeping up with them than about being patient.

There are some things I am definitely not patient about. Like baking that has to be rolled out and cut, or decorated one at a time: hardly ever.

3. Share about a time when you felt like you could fly. Or a time you wished you could fly. Or a time you felt like you were flying.

I flew to Chicago this summer. I don't mind being in the air or high up somewhere as long as it's not something I can fall out of! Ferris wheels and ski lifts, no thank you.

4. Your favorite song with the word fly in the title or lyrics, or your favorite song that relates to flying in some way?

Well, there's the gospel hymn "I"ll Fly Away." But how about this one? (The 2 minute mark. Apparently there were some things you weren't supposed to see on TV in 1968!)



5. What's in your fall picnic basket and where are we picnicking in your neck of the woods this time of year?

We didn't take a picnic, but we had a walk through the park grounds in Stratford this past weekend, before this week's chillier weather set in. Lots of oak trees dropping acorns, black walnut trees dropping walnuts, ducks flying into the Avon river. (These are Mr. Fixit's photos.)

6.  Carpentry, electrical, plumbing, landscaping...which skill would you most like to possess and how would you put that skill to use today?

I would fix our back deck, because the wood's rotting away and we've been having trouble getting someone to come out and replace the flooring. Time's getting short, weather's getting colder, and if I had the skills and the muscles I'd go out and hammer some boards on myself.

7. What's something you think is too expensive to justify buying lately?

Magazines. I read them in waiting rooms instead.

8. Insert your own random thought here.

Last night we had an "international buffet." We had already eaten Monday's turkey leftovers in sandwiches, so for supper we had (freezer meal) curried chicken, Vietnamese-style frozen spring rolls, a few Ukrainian pork dumplings, turkey dressing, and leftover Caesar salad. I still have leftover cranberry sauce, but I can usually figure out something to do with that. (Apple-cranberry pie might be nice.)

Linked from Fly Me to the Hodgepodge at This Side of the Pond.

What's for supper? Making it better

Tonight's dinner menu:

Revamp of last night's beef, mushroom, potato "stoop" that wasn't very inspiring particularly as leftovers. I rinsed off most of the stodgy sauce and reheated the remainder with onion and pizza sauce, then melted cheese on top and we'll have it on noodles. Peas on the side.

Revamp of leftover raspberry pudding, plus frozen bits of pizza cake, plus the end of a jar of jam and enough water to moisten it all.

What's for supper? Unstuffed cabbage

Here is a non-recipe for unstuffed cabbage.

Start with: one pound ground pork; half a can tomatoes, frozen; 2 cups rice and lentils, frozen.

Add in: half a bag leftover shredded cabbage.

Brown the pork and stir in the rice and lentils.

Layer in a casserole with tomatoes and cabbage. I used too much cabbage so it ended up a little soupy but still tasty. Add salt and extra seasonings if needed.

Sprinkle with paprika. I also added a cupful of tomato sauce on top (not in photo). Bake at 350 degrees until heated through and cabbage is cooked.

Casserole out of the oven.

Eat with rye bread.

What's for supper? Potato dinner, change of flavours

Tonight's dinner menu, changed slightly:

Two skillet dinners, one with ground beef, one with romano beans; pizza sauce, celery, onion, tomato puree, mushrooms, leftover potatoes, seasonings. Italian cheese blend if you want.

An experiment-cake made with blueberries and half a bag of frozen cranberries. It is very soft and fruit-heavy, so definitely a fork-eater.

What's for supper when it really snows

Tonight's dinner menu:

Upside-Down Meatloaf from Saving Dinner, but with breadcrumbs made from garlic breadsticks, instead of rolled oats

Baked potatoes

Mixed green veggies and cabbage

Snowfall Cake, which is chocolate cake with some white chocolate chips leftover from Christmas added in and grated on top.

And it all goes in the oven together. Except the veggies.

What's for supper? Invented casserole

Tonight's dinner menu:

Chicken-vegetable casserole
Baked potatoes

Pears baked with dates and a little honey

Chicken Vegetable Casserole I Just Invented

Ingredients:

2 cups leftover cooked ground chicken with taco seasonings
1 cup frozen corn
1 cup frozen broccoli, more if you love broccoli
1 cup chicken broth
1 cup sour cream
1 egg
1 cup shredded cheese (I used a Tex-Mex blend with jalapenos)
Whole wheat bread crumbs mixed with a little olive oil, enough to cover the top

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a greased 8-inch square pan or casserole dish, combine leftover chicken and vegetables. Combine broth, sour cream and egg, and pour over vegetables. Cover top of casserole with cheese, then crumbs moistened with olive oil. Bake at 350 degrees until set. I took it out after 45 minutes and let it sit 10 minutes before cutting.

You could add extra seasonings, but our chicken and cheese were already well-seasoned, so I let it be.

What's for supper?

Tonight's dinner menu (we had a friend stay at the last minute):

Leftover orange juice chicken
Thawed chicken-rice-bean casserole
Vegetarian chili made very quickly with sliced mushrooms, a can of mixed beans, frozen corn, and spices
Butternut squash
A few perogies
Rolls, bread

and

A muffin, date and yogurt-pretzel plate arranged by Ponytails.

What's for supper? Mostly potatoes

Tonight's dinner menu:

Ranch-spiced potatoes
Peameal bacon
Baked beans (canned)

Cran-apple crisp mini muffins

Frugal Finds and Fixes

Frugal things I did this week:

Refilled the hot chocolate can with homemade mix

Read library books

Did logic puzzles in a magazine I bought with a Christmas gift card, and made one puzzle do double duty by using it for math class

Watched library DVDs and listened to Nero Wolfe on the radio

Used the frozen saved bits of Christmas squares to make Chocolate Fig Balls

Made slow cooker cereal with half brown rice, half barley

Cleaned out some we're-near-the-end-of-homeschooling resources to give away, which doesn't exactly save us any money but maybe it can help somebody else with their thrifty homeschooling. And it does free up space.

Used up as many groceries as possible (rather than buying something else)

 Made pumpkin cookies with a cup of frozen pumpkin.

Lydia found ice skates at the thrift store, plus a bag to carry them in, plus a pair of jeans.

Use Em Up Cookie Balls

I do love my food processor.

Chocolate Fig Post-Christmas Balls

Ingredients:

A few ugly figs (see Christmas Dinner), hard stems trimmed off
About a cupful of chocolate chips
One container of the edges and crumbles of Christmas no-bake squares, containing a variety of coconut, chocolate, nuts, and cookie crumbs; saved in the freezer for just such as this
Orange juice to moisten slightly

Run everything through the food processor until it forms a thick, slightly sticky mass. Form into balls and roll them in coconut or whatever you want--I used rolled oats run through the food processor (good way to clean out the sticky stuff).  Don't bake, just eat.

What's for dessert? Cran-raspberry pie.

Today's made-up-as-we-go dessert recipe: Cran-Raspberry Pie.  I did not make the filling very sweet; the only extra sweetener in the fruit part was the cranberry sauce. If you find that too tart, you could add sugar or other sweetener.

Ingredients:

Unbaked pastry to fill a 10-inch pie plate (I used pat-in pastry).  If your dish is smaller, you can adjust the amounts of filling.

1 cup frozen cranberries
Frozen raspberries to fill up the crust
Half a can of wholeberry cranberry sauce, mixed with 1 tbsp. cornstarch, spread over the fruit in the crust

1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup quick oats
1/2 cup oil or choice of other fat

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Fill crust with fruit and cranberry sauce. Combine flour, sugar, and oats, and stir in oil to make crumbs. Top pie with crumbs, right to the edges.  Bake 10 minutes at 425 degrees, then turn down to 350 degrees and continue baking about 40 minutes or until fruit is cooked and topping is golden but not too brown.  Whipped cream is nice on top, but it would be fine alone too.

What's for supper? Use up your noodles

Tonight's dinner menu:

Pasta and sauce, meat optional
Raw vegetables
Garlic bread, made from homemade whole wheat bread, melted butter, garlic powder, chopped parsley

Ice cream

Tonight's Pasta Recipe:

Part of a package of noodles; part of a package of whole grain spirals
One can pasta sauce, a bit of leftover tomato paste
Chopped mushrooms, yellow peppers, and grape tomatoes
Olive oil for the skillet
1 pound ground beef
Parmesan cheese for sprinkling

Warm a spoonful of olive oil in a large skillet. Add chopped vegetables and tomatoes, and simmer a few minutes.  In another pan, brown and drain a pound of ground beef.  Add half the can of pasta sauce to each pan, and some tomato paste to the vegetable pan.  Simmer while you cook a potful of mixed pasta and noodles because you forgot to buy spaghetti.  Let everyone mix and match sauces as they want.

What we had for supper: finish off those packages

Last night's dinner menu:

Ukrainian-style pork dumplings, which look like big tortellini. We got them frozen from the Eurofoods store.

Macaroni and cheese, made with very small farfalle (bowties) that we needed to use up.  I used The Boy's Smack 'n' Cheese recipe that I learned years ago from Coffeemamma, and let it sit to thicken towards the end rather than overcooking the small pasta.

A skillet vegetable mixture of (reheated) butternut squash, red pepper, and corn, heated with honey and water (that is, the end of a honey bottle swished out with water), salt, pepper, margarine, and nutmeg. I thought it would go well with the pork dumplings.