SOUP!

Had a nice evening the other night just chatting with some of my BFF. We covered many subjects but of course food came up. We reminisced about our comfort foods from when we were growing up and also those foods we use to fix when we had our growing families. Amazing how similar our mothers cooked. So for the contest for October class either post or bring a copy of two of your favorite comfort recipes, one from your growing up years, one from your early marriage years. If there is no recipe describe how you fixed it. I will try to post some of these as the months go by.

Now when the kids were all at home and we were running to sporting or school events every night our staple supper meal was soup. Now our soup at the time would be what Rachael Ray refers to as stoup. Something between a soup and a stew. It was easily prepared early in the day and could simmer on the stove until everyone had the time or was home from practice.

Normally our soup would be eaten the first night as thinner soup with a crusty bread or maybe with a sandwich. The second night you could add pasta or rice or mashed potatoes and have a totally new meal, the third night you could make one of those bisquick pies and use the small amount of what was leftover as the meat and vegetable part or maybe another type of casserole could be utilized. So there were 3 meals from one basic cooking. Forgot to say that the soup was normally started from the main meat form Sundays dinner. If you had a roast you had some kind of beef soup, roast chicken-chicken soup, turkey or turkey - breast turkey soup, so on and so forth. Of course in those days meat had bones and bones make good stock which is the beginning of any good soup. Next week maybe we will address soup stock or broth, the difference and how to make them.

One of our soups which didn't start from Sunday dinner was chili.

The favorite Lyle soup was always "Dad's" Chili Soup. The kids always raved when dad made chili, now don't tell them but dad only made it occasionally and we never told them that. So chili here is very simple. This is for the whole tribe. Chop one large onion. Saute it in the big silver pan with a little oil. Add 3 to 5 lbs hamburger (we prefer ground chuck), drain and keep drippings. Add 2 quarts vegetable juice. (if really broke this week and don't have any in the pantry tomato juice is okay.) Open and put in 6 cans red kidney beans and 6 cans chili beans.
Heat thru, adjust salt and add chili powder if not hot enough. Also if the soup didn't have enough beef taste add back some of the drippings. Now the first day this would be fairly thin, the second day we would eat it over spaghetti. The third or fourth day it would go into a casserole with macaroni, corn, and cheese. See how easy. The kids never got tired of it.

So another recipe contest what is your family's favorite soup?

Octobers contest, One ticket for each recipe soup or comfort food.