Right now, one floor above me, the crockpot is warming a lovely batch I assembled over the weekend... small white navy beans, smoked pork hocks, cabbage, onions, carrots, and a quart of home-made chicken/vegetable stock I found in the freezer. Fabulous. Lots of Worcestershire sauce. Made it up as I went along and yum yum yum.
The love of soups and soup-creating came with the Great Layoffs of '08, when my husband and I were among the millions of couples where both partners got laid off within a week or two each other, right before Christmas. SO-O-O-O Dickensian! Gotta love the classics.
(The typical unemployed worker is now unemployed for over 40 weeks.)
We lost our full time gigs and benefits, and as we began our long downward slog through what was left of our 401(k)s and many underpaid substitute jobs, I began to make soups, and plenty of them. Black bean, kidney bean, split pea, navy bean, pinto bean; sausage, bacon, pork hocks, chicken, oxtails, leftover anything; tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, celery, cabbage, sweet potatoes, parsnips, spinach; I've made everything but my classic beef stew. I'm saving up the beef stew for when I feel wealthy enough to buy stewing meat, cut up, outright. I always get into this protestant guilt episode when I look at the price of stew beef and compare it to other soup meats and do mental math about what it's costing me to let the butcher cut it up vs. how much time it'd take me to actually cut it up myself.
My husband's getting a raise. I am going to buy the beef cut up for stew. Celebrate!
2 comments:
Yum soup! You should check out the cookbook "Cooking More w/ Less." Troy loves that book and it has some great ideas.
Sorry hit post too soon. Here's the gist.
"Longacre has gathered 500 recipes from Mennonite kitchens that tell us how to eat better and consume less of the world's limited food resources. All recipes have been tested by professional home economists. This cookbook is written for those who care about their own health and the food needs of others in the world." The companion books "Simply in Season" and "Extendding the Table" are also good.
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