The Story of Soup

Today was a soup day. For sure.

Rainy, dark, cold & blustery.

A good day to read & make soup.

So we did.

Lot's of soup.

Our cupboards and freezers are looking pretty bare these days.

It's been a long time since we butchered anything. And  I haven't run the canner in a while.

And since we make everything (mostly) from scratch when the freezers & cupboards are bare dinner starts to look darn near impossible.

I cooked up a HUGE ham hock the other day & picked most of the meat off that to go in some cheesy potatoes for dinner yesterday.

Then I threw the ham hock back in the crock pot with water to make broth.

So this morning I picked & strained that, added beans & onion & put it back on the stove until it simmered thick & yummy into ham & bean soup.

That was 2 (count them 2) full meals from a ham hock.

We also had a package of beef short ribs in the freezer.

Since nobody here is extra fond of short ribs I boiled those down into lovely broth. Strained & picked that this morning. Added in carrots & onions & split peas & lentils & tomatoes & boiled up a huge stock pot of beef veggie soup.

I have 7 jars of that in the pressure canner right now & enough still in the pot for another batch.

It will be nice to have some meals basically ready to go in the cupboard again.

Now I just need to make a big batch of the ham & bean soup to can. And some chili. And then the cupboard will not be so bare.

As for the freezer we have 40 some chickens waiting for a sunny day to die.

And the hogs are going on the 1st.

It will be fabulous to have pork again.

And we have a calf we will turn into hamburger & soup bones in a few weeks.

So the freezer shouldn't be empty much longer.

We also have about 7 rabbits almost ready.

And 2 turkeys (Thanksgiving & Christmas of course).

And I've been thinking about pre-mixing some of our most used baking recipes to save time & make it easier for my 7 year old budding pastry chef.

I'm thinking biscuits, pancakes,muffins, chocolate chips cookies... maybe fritters & some quick breads.

That might help breakfast to get on the table a little quicker.

If I put enough time into having things ready beforehand it is almost as simple as just opening a box or a can like most folks do.

Why don't we just do that you ask?

Well. Partly because it's important to us to know where our food comes from.

And partly because my husband has some serious health issues & many many prepackaged processed store bought foods have additives & ingredients that make him very sick.

So the easiest way to make sure he avoids those is to make pretty muchly everything ourselves.

But most of the time the food we make tastes better than what you can buy anyway so it all works out in the end.

Right? Right.

Plus I get to see how many meals I can get out of 1 cut of meat. It's like a game...how far can we stretch these bones?

Yeah I know. It's a weird housewife/farmwife thing...

Blessings.