Soup for Cold Weather

Ouch! The weather outside is not frightful yet, but the forecast for week’s end is definitely iffy. I’m already thinking about what food goes with being cooped up like broody chickens.

Cold weather mates well with soup and maybe a skillet of cornbread. But what soup?

Potato soup is a good candidate and easy to make from scratch.

There is always a potato or two around, but we have substituted dehydrated hash browns for fresh potatoes. Besides the potato, it only takes some sugar, bacon, milk or cream, and flour or corn starch and white cheese for the cheese sauce. Only one of us is a fan of dehydrated foods.

I bought the trusty and dependable dehydrator long ago and used it when we had a garden.

Dehydrating veggies is not the first choice for preserving them, but I’ve done it and likely will do it again the next time we have a garden.

Dehydrating food is nothing new. “Leather Britches” isn’t clothing but the result of stringing green beans with a needle and thread and hanging them in a warm dry place. People who raise little red peppers string them also to dry and preserve.

I stumbled upon an idea for quick supper last year. It is filling, makes a good supper and won’t make you fat.

This soup starts with vegetable or chicken broth on the stove with some spaghetti tossed in. Once the noodles are tender, I add frozen mixed veggies. I buy them for about a dollar a bag, and one bag makes two large pots of soup.

I wondered if I could find a way to make the same soup without having to refrigerate any of it. Dehydrated veggies soup mix is available on line for about four bucks. A pot of soup takes about two tablespoons of dehydrated veggies plus one bouillon cube. The taste is the same.

Right now I’m having a bowl of soup for lunch and have yet to get tired of it. It is so easy a man can do it.

We just finished a pot of soup made of left overs. It started with a Thanksgiving turkey wing simmering until keepsake bits of meat fell off. That also made free broth.

There is always a container of bits and pieces of chicken left over in the freezer.

Recently we had some leftover butternut squash and decided to turn it into soup. We added this and that with progressive tasting until it was about right, but we didn’t write down anything and couldn’t remember the amounts.

All I recall was butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, a few scrapes of fresh nutmeg in a white sauce.

We like broccoli cheese soup but have never made it.

That might be our next project, but this time we’ll write down everything we toss into the pot if it turns out.

I’ll let you know.

joenphillips@yahoo.com