Soup: The Food Budget Stretcher

Anyone who does the food shopping knows that the cost of food has risen dramatically over the last few years. More and more families are faced with the challenge of feeding a family, while paying more for utilities and gas. One of the oldest and often most delicious ways to supplement your food budget is with soup.

Soup is nutritious, welcome during the cold months and is an excellent way to stretch a little bit of meat over a number of plates. By adding toast, garlic bread, rolls, biscuits, cornbread, crackers or breadsticks to the meal, you can fill their tummies without emptying your wallet.

While canned soups are still a good buy (even though the size of the can has shrunk), this author prefers the full flavor and flexibility of the homemade kind. Even if you don't consider yourself a "cook," soup is easy enough that anyone who can boil water can make soup. My husband and my children have made an art of creating "refrigerator soup." On Friday or Saturday, they collect the week's leftovers and combine them to create a soup that everyone then gives a name. We have had green pea and carrot cream soup, beef tomato barley soup, chicken cheese soup, fizzy gig pasta soup and the list goes on.

Soup can be made from just about anything. Growing up on a farm and living in a frugal family, soup was on our menu at least twice a week. Leftover vegetables and meat were turned into savory soups that you would never see in the grocery store. Broth is the starter base for most soups. Broth can be purchase from the store or you can make your own by boiling fish, chicken or beef bones along with vegetables such as carrots, onions and celery and adding a bit of salt and seasoning. You just boil everything in a pot with water for about an hour to extract flavor, then strain and voila! You have soup stock. Any broth can be turned into a creamed type soup by adding milk, cream or a little water cornstarch mixture.

With the broth as your base, you simply add bite sized pieces of cooked meat or vegetables and you can add pasta or rice. The contents of a soup are only limited by your imagination. One of my family's favorite soups (or stews, depending on how much water is added) is something we call Mexican Chicken Mish Mash. It is made by combining crushed tomatoes, chili powder, cooked chicken, canned corn, roasted peppers and kidney beans. When our schedule is crisscrossing and everyone will be eating at a different time, we put this in the crock-pot and put the cornbread in some tin foil in the oven and everyone gets a nice hot, satisfying dinner whenever they are ready.

If you are up for a little more challenge, try cooking a soup from scratch with a recipe from your favorite cookbook. Soups can be as plain or as fancy as you like. They can be topped with croutons, cheese, sour cream or chopped scallions. Check to see if your supermarket has a section for soup mixes. The Publix here carries a 15-bean soup mix that is outrageously good and beans are an excellent source of protein. We save the bone from our ham and toss it in with whatever bean soup we are making. It adds a great deal of flavor. Make a big pot of soup and freeze any leftovers into serving size portions for a quick warm up on a cold winter evening.

Tip: If you are making your own beef stock, try to get a large soup bone from your grocery meet department or local butcher. The marrow (jelly like substance inside the bone) is very high in flavor and adds body to your stock.