Soup’s accompaniment

What’s a good soup without some sort of yummy bread to go along, and perhaps to dip in the soup?

Ok, yes, I can hear you saying, “A good soup without some sort of yummy bread is still a good soup.”

But a good soup WITH a yummy bread accompaniment is even better.

Tonight we are trying these cornbread muffins. yum.

Vegetable Stock…aka…Compost soup base

It’s soup season, which I love.
So today I thought I would share a homemade vegetable stock “recipe” that my sister in law Sandi taught me how to make last winter. It’s the perfect base for all your fall and winter soups and stews, and doesn’t have any artificial (think Buillion cubes) flavorings.

What’s almost even better is that it doesn’t cost anything to make, as it’s a way to get some more mileage out of the veggies you have already purchased and used in other recipes.

All you do is collect all your vegetable scraps in a freezer bag and store in the freezer. What I do is put all my carrot peelings and ends, celery scraps, onion scraps and garlic scraps from my garlic press, along with any fresh herb pieces in this bag. You could add other kinds of veggies as well for varied flavors.

When the bag is full, defrost it and then put it in a big soup/stock pot.
Add water and some additional dried or fresh spices.

Bring to a boil and then simmer on low heat for 1-2 hours.
Strain and Voila!…homemade vegetable stock.

I made this yesterday as I had two bags of frozen veggie scraps in the freezer just begging to be made into something more useful.

I froze some in bottles for future soups and used some for a Potato and Corn Chowder that is cooking in my Crockpot right now.

MMMMMMMM….

(As a side note, in the third picture, can you see what Mykah was doing while I was stock-making? Yes, there was Play-doh EVERYWHERE.)