Soup season has come to an end. Soup is our favorite winter lunch, so all summer long I stick leftovers into a recycled peanut butter jar as "soup fixins." I defrost a jar every couple of days, add the previous days leftover soup and a pint jar of bone broth. Sometimes I'll toss in new leftovers. In the bowl pictured above, I tossed in a handful of freshly chopped kale from the garden. And there's lunch. But eventually, the weather starts to warm up and we have our last bowl of soup for the season.
This year was the first time I think I managed an ongoing soup from the first bowl to the last. There's usually some left in the pot and this gets put back in the fridge until the next day, when it's added to for a "new" soup.
Sometimes Dan asks what's in it, but I honestly can't be sure. The big bites are identifiable, but when I collect those summer leftovers, I scrape every last bit of tasty goodness into the soup jar. If the pot or pan is sticky with gravy or sauce, I glaze the pan and pour the liquid into the jar so that there are no air gaps. When I finish up a jar or bottle of sauce, ketchup, or tomato juice, I'll swish it with a little bit of water and add that to the jar too. I've even been known to add dumplings, stale tortilla chips, cheese, even leftover meat pie, crust and all. Everything but dessert goes into those jars. Nothing gets wasted! When it gets chilly out again in fall, I'll have at least a couple dozen jars of frozen soup fixins' for our winter lunches.
With the milder weather the chickens and ducks have started laying again, so our warm weather lunches revolve around eggs and salads. It's another way food helps mark our seasons.
What about you? Do you have seasonal food favorites?
I love my soup. Even when it's officially too warm, I still like a bowl from the freezer.
ReplyDeleteLiz, on rainy days I'm still serving it with a sandwich! I always feel like I'm getting something extra nutritious when I eat soup.
DeleteWe eat soup year-round. It's just so comforting and easy to throw together. Enjoy the warm up!
ReplyDeleteDaisy, it's one of the easiest meals to make! And always tasty.
DeleteThough my husband gets unhappy if we have soup too often, I also keep a container of soup fixings in the freezer, and add a jar of home canned vegetable broth to ours. Asparagus is a spring favorite, tomatoes and other garden goodies in the summer, winter squash, chestnuts and brassicas in the cold months. Your never-ending soup is a smart and frugal way to manage lunches.
ReplyDeleteLaurie, it's funny, but Dan used to not like soup. Now he loves it. But I only serve it for lunch, usually with something else on the side, and dinner is more traditional. Plus my soups are generally "thick," which he likes better than "thin" brothy soups. Even so, to each their own!
DeleteWe do eat a fair amount of soup in winter but I have never heard of soup the way you do it. It makes since but I'm not sure the rest of my family would buy into it. We mostly always just cook a new batch of soup when we eat it from fresh ingredients. What scraps of food we have, generally get composted for our garden.
ReplyDeleteI guess I don't have season favorites more than I have seasonal cooking techniques. We use our slow cooker a lot during the winter but never during the summer. Likewise we use the grill quite a bit in summer but not in winter. We also tend to eat more cold foods in the summer and winter food is almost always eaten hot.
Ed, that's a good point about seasonal cooking techniques. Summer is usually about trying not to heat the kitchen up more than necessary. Winter is just the opposite! I also like to do dehydrating in winter, because the dehydrator adds warmth to the kitchen overnight.
DeleteLeigh, I will say that with our location to New Home 3.0, soups and stews are likely on the menu for much longer. I could easily see eating them here from mid-October through to the end of April without feeling too warm.
ReplyDeleteTB, that's nice! Delicious and nutritious. Plus easy. That's my kind of cooking. :)
DeleteSoup season is definitely waning now. Soup simmered on the woodstove is a staple in the winter. At present, we only start a fire in the AM, and then let it go out, so time to get out the crock pot. I try to use our 'free' energy (solar) as much as possible now that energy levels are more abundant
ReplyDeleteI have a big file of favourite soup recipes I've clipped over the years, and rotate them, incorporating left-overs into the next batch. Makes it interesting. I like your 'soup jar' idea, and may have to steal it!
We do the same thing! Only now that it's so warm out, we don't need even the woodstove in the morning.
DeleteI confess with my jar soup method, I've completely given up on recipes. Except occasionally French onion. :)
I also love soup. However, my hubs doesn't. It just amazes me that he doesn't like soup. LOL Great idea to keep the soup going. Now you can enjoy eggs. Thanks for the birthday wishes.
ReplyDeleteNicole, Dan hated soup when he was growing up, but somehow he's become a big fan. Maybe the difference is the ingredients versus what commercial soups have in them, I don't know!
DeleteIn the short time I have been reading your blog, I have learned how resourceful you are, so your soup rotation is no surprise. I love soup too, especially tomato basil with a grilled cheese sandwich, which I'll happily eat any time of year.
ReplyDeleteBob, I'll take that as a compliment! Grilled cheese and tomato are a favorite here too, although I haven't been able to make a tomato soup we think is perfect. But it is best with grilled cheese. :)
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