Shelf Stable Saturday and a recipe for creamy vegetable soup

Creamy Vegetable Soup

• 2 cans of mixed vegetables, drained and rinsed
• 2 cans condensed cream soup, any flavor (mushroom, chicken, broccoli, potato)
• 1 can chicken broth or 1 cup water and 1 chicken bouillon cube
  
• 4 cups of water
• Salt and pepper to taste (I like to use seasoning salt, like Lawry's)
  

1.  Dump all ingredients into a soup pot
2. Bring to a boil then turn to low and simmer (barely bubbling) for 20 minutes. Stir occasionally
   
3.  If you want to cook in a microwave, use half of all ingredients (I don't have a microwave safe bowl big enough to cook that much soup in) and cook for 8-10 minutes, stopping and stirring every few minutes.
   

  So... coming to the end of the week and seeing an empty fridge is a scary thing. Some weeks it works out that way on purpose, because maybe the menu plan is working. Other weeks, it is because there is a lack of something. Lack of time, lack of ability to get to the store, lack of money can make an empty fridge. 

 The question is, what to do? We've got to eat, right? Well, if we have food in the cupboards, it might just be a case of being creative. If we don't, it might mean a visit to a food pantry or borrowing from a neighbor or family member. Being able to pull together a meal out of random shelf stable ingredients is a skill. It takes practice. Some things are instinct, right? Like spaghetti and sauce, canned chili and rice or pasta, but sometimes, the ingredients looking back at you don't necessarily tell you what to fix.

  This is where learning what kind of flavor combinations your family likes to eat can give you a clue.

Vegetable soup is a common money saving meal you can make from shelf stable ingredients. I found out though, that my family doesn't like vegetable soup. For years I skipped over this suggestion on all the blogs because they didn't like vegetable soup. One day out of desperation, I put two cans of vegetables in a pot with half a bag of egg noodles, some water and some chicken bouillon cubes. I was thinking, well, they like chicken noodle soup, I'll just make it vegetables instead of chicken and see how that goes. Ha! Everyone ate it just fine! Turns out, it wasn't that they didn't like soup, or that they didn't like vegetables, they didn't like the tomato-y base of traditional vegetable soups! When I started making vegetable soup with chicken broth instead of tomatoes, they ate it just fine.

All that to say, sometimes, thinking about what flavor combinations your family likes can help spark an idea for combining what ever you have available.

• Canned greens (mustard, turnip, spinach) go really well with tomato products (diced, sauce, paste)
• Boxed potatoes go with any canned meat for a casserole affect. Peas and green beans work well here too
• Beans (dried or canned) go great with any canned pork product or Mexican flavors, can also be added to any soup to up the protein
  
• Rice goes with everything! You can add it to canned soups, chili or stews. You can top it with canned vegetables and meat, you can serve it as a side. If nothing else, you can just eat it plain
• Breakfast for dinner- pancakes from box mix, fried spam and applesauce are a popular option here!
• Canned soup can be served as soup, beefed up with other veg or beans, cooked with rice or pasta, used to hold ingredients together in a casserole
• Pasta can be mixed with tomato products, soups (especially good with cream soups), or cooked and cooled and mixed with bottled salad dressing for a pasta salad
• Oatmeal can be served with canned fruit or raisins, or made into patties and fried

As long as you combine flavors that your family likes together, it should work out ok.

Here is a cool article on flavors, how to combine them and how to fix something that doesn't taste quite right.