Winter Soup with Summer Veggies...

I love making soup... I love walking outside on a brisk morning collecting onions, herbs, kale, collard greens, and whatever else I can find in the garden in the dead of winter to add to my soup stock... I love putting it on first thing in the morning... then going about my business all the while smelling the most heavenly aromas coming from the kitchen with the added comfort of knowing dinner is, for the most part, done!  

I also love saving valuable typically disgarded Thanksgiving turkey carcasses.... or leftover roast beef bones from the dog... or neck, back and ribs of a chicken... and turning them into delicious,  nutritious calcium enriched soup stock.  I purchase whole chickens making a meal from the legs, breasts and thighs and turn the backs, necks and ribs into a rich broth... Add any of the above to a pot of water with an onion, celery, garlic, salt and pepper, thyme springs, carrots...whatever you have!   Add a tablespoon of vinegar to your broth to help pull all the very good for you calcium rich ingredients from the bone into your broth.  Cook it for hours long and slow. Then cool and remove the bones.  (If I'm not immediately making soup I will freeze it in glass jars being sure to leave 1" of headspace in the jar).     

A pot of soup at our house never tastes the same.   A couple summers ago I started dehydrating my summer surplus of vegetables.... zucchini, okra, cherry tomatoes, peppers, celery, onions, eggplant, squash.. whatever we couldn't eat fast enough.   If I had beans left over after a pot of "good ole' black and pinto beans" I'd spread them on sheets and dehydrate them.  Together everything went into large jars.... they were so pretty sitting on my pantry shelves.  (I also keep a soup container of leftover bits of brown rice, meat or veggies in my freezer.) Add a quart of those frozen roasted tomatoes we learned how to make further down in this blog.  Sweet joy is tossing a handful of your dried summer garden veggies and watching them turn your homemade soup stock into a rich, flavorful, beautiful, colorful, delicious soup.  No recipe... just a little of this and a little of that all combined makes an incredible pot of soup!  Simmer it all about an hour or more until thickened and the veggies have had a good chance to rehydrate.  Yummm....

What was my desire to be frugal turned into a huge time saver and nutrition bonus.   I must say I now cannot imagine trying to make soup without a fist full of summer veggies... and when my jars aren't quite as full as I'd like them to be... I get nervous.  I think I'm hooked.