Super scrumptious soup, super "free"
Apparently, I’m not a food stylist. Yet I am compelled to brag about this incredibly good soup, so well-loved in this house and yet so THRIFTY.
Here are the ingredients:
Leftover roast from Sunday’s pot roast
Leftover hamburger from Friday’s spaghetti
Leftover salsa from Saturday’s salsa and chips
3/4 of an opened carton of beef broth
Can of tomato soup, collecting dust in the back of the pantry
A third of a box of macaroni
A splash of Worcester sauce
A splash of soy sauce
A glop of sour cream
A dusting of dill
Truly, a sublime soup, flung together with ingredients on hand, all parts of other meals that became a meal from their sum. We really would have been hard pressed to slap together a real meal from the leftover meats, which is when I start feeling soupy, EL CHEAPO soupy!
We saved about $23, too, on a pizza call. Saved from the Pizza Man! What a great feeling!
Along the same lines:
Often when I’m grocery shopping, I snag a jar of pizza sauce and a package of pepperoni, especially if these items are on sale. Usually, I have plenty of hamburger on hand from my Amish farmer Atlee, from whom we usually buy a portion of a cow every few months. I also tend to have a can or two of beans lurking in the pantry, and maybe a can of stewed tomatoes.
Here’s what I’m getting at:
PIZZA CHILI
This grand recipe is from one of my favorite blogs, My Year of Slow Cooking, by the brilliant, funny, and talented Stephanie O Dea. If I have the bare bones chili ingredients on hand, I make it special by pouring a jar of pizza sauce and dumping the package of pepperoni in the pot. I’ve made it in a pot and in a crock pot; works beautifully either way.
Somehow this recipe scratches the pizza itch without actually buying a pizza. It’s great for a Friday night when you really have a hankering for pizza but you’d rather KEEP that $23 (I can’t abide $5 cardboard pizza, can you?)
If you have shredded cheese lying around, even better. The whole family loves this and again, it works like a charm against the urge to call the pizza guy!
What are your favorite Friday night go-to’s NOT involving dialing P. Hut or similar pie purveyor?
And apropos of nothing, except MSOTA of course
…here’s a photo or two from my last visit to Amish friends in late summer:
…here’s a photo or two from my last visit to Amish friends in late summer:
Mary Yoder's canned pickles
In your book Money Secrets of the Amish on page 76 you wrote that Amos Miller….” had somehow saved more than $400,000 as a down payment on his own $1.3 million piece of prime Lancaster County farmland.” Am I correct to conclude that this action would put Amos almost $0.9 million in debt and wouldn’t that be something an Amish would want to avoid.
Hey Raymond, sorry for the tardy reply! Yes, you are correct in that Amos would have .9 million to pay back. But I would imagine Amos would work extremely hard to pay off that debt as soon as possible, even if it took him 25 years. It would be better than to NOT own a farm of his own, and throw that much and more down the rent drain, and have nothing to leave his children. Does that make sense? Thanks for your comment!