This is how I cook. I take a look in the garden and see what's ready for the day. Pick it .. bring it inside .. and fashion it into dinner. Last night I made Garden Potage or 'stoup' (Rachel Ray's term for thinner than stew and thicker than soup:). Pulling homemade beef stock from the pantry for the base and adding a little left over rice from a two nights ago, dicing a left over hamburger patty into mince, adding green beans, diced sorrel, diced red potato, onions and fresh herbs. Served over steamed garden cabbage. Side salad of thinly sliced cucumber splashed with apple cider vinegar, honey and dill, a glass of fresh farm milk and pan toast. Hubby paid a nice complement and then commented how he would never complain again about being finicky over the food he's served (He is reading a book about a WWII pilot and I think it must go into detail how people were starving during the war). No recipe from a book and we probably won't have the same exact thing twice. I figure it cost 35 cents a serving (for the milk and ingredients used for making the bread). Three people fed a delicious and nutritious meal for $1.05. We rarely have leftovers and if we do, you can bet they get re-purposed into another delicious meal. Friday, August 10, 2012
Subsistence Meals
This is how I cook. I take a look in the garden and see what's ready for the day. Pick it .. bring it inside .. and fashion it into dinner. Last night I made Garden Potage or 'stoup' (Rachel Ray's term for thinner than stew and thicker than soup:). Pulling homemade beef stock from the pantry for the base and adding a little left over rice from a two nights ago, dicing a left over hamburger patty into mince, adding green beans, diced sorrel, diced red potato, onions and fresh herbs. Served over steamed garden cabbage. Side salad of thinly sliced cucumber splashed with apple cider vinegar, honey and dill, a glass of fresh farm milk and pan toast. Hubby paid a nice complement and then commented how he would never complain again about being finicky over the food he's served (He is reading a book about a WWII pilot and I think it must go into detail how people were starving during the war). No recipe from a book and we probably won't have the same exact thing twice. I figure it cost 35 cents a serving (for the milk and ingredients used for making the bread). Three people fed a delicious and nutritious meal for $1.05. We rarely have leftovers and if we do, you can bet they get re-purposed into another delicious meal. 
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6 comments:
That's pretty much "my" style, too ('cept I don't have the garden that you do...).
I like the "stoup" name. I don't watch R.R. so hadn't heard it before.
and it would never work at my house...unless it was wartime and we were starving...Ha! I do like that quote though...LOL
That sounds delicious and those sorts of meals are often the most delicious. My mother, who was Dutch, was very short of food during the last years of the second world war in Holland. She and her brothers travelled miles on bicycles without tyres to find food. They even had to eat tulip bulbs at one stage. After that she never ever threw any food away.
Mrs. Mac,
The sound of your Garden Potage stoup sound delicious. I love creating a meal from fresh grown vegetables from the garden and home canned broth. When you're done eating you feel so good because there was no preservatives or chemicals you can't pronounce listed on the label. Fresh homegrown or raised food is the best food to survive on for the human body. If we look back into history, the cancers and illness we have now were not really present. Families were much healthier back then. Americans need to revert back to being self sufficient with vegetables, fruits, grains and meats.
That's my kind of meal. I often use up leftover that way, and I have a great husband who likes it too. I'm so thankful for that!
This sounds like one of our favorite meals, everything home grow! There is nothing more satisfying than that
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