Last night we had soup for dinner. Two soups, to be exact. I thought I'd share both recipes, because they are a kind of "use what you have on hand" recipe and handy to know.
Soup 1: CHICKEN WONTON SOUP
1. Go to Costco to return the shorts that didn't fit Joe. While you're there spend a couple hundred dollars on other stuff, which includes one broiled Costco chicken and a bag of frozen small chicken cilantro wontons that are on sale for $2.50 off.
2. Eat however much of that broiled chicken you want for dinner. Put the rest of it, bones and skin and all, including the juices in the bottom of the bag, into a big pot and cover with water.
3. Boil for an hour or four.
4. Drain broth off and into another pot. Remove chicken from bones. Make a chicken sandwich for lunch.
5. To broth, add bullion powder and salt and pepper to taste. You seriously need to taste it to see if its tasty enough. Most people just need to add salt. Salt does not get enough credit. Neither does pepper.
6. Clean a couple carrots, a stalk of celery, some mushrooms, green onion, cabbage... whatever fitting veggies you might have in the crisper drawer. You could also add water chestnuts if you have them. Anyway, cut the veggies super thin. Tonight I actually used the peeler to make my carrot slices almost translucent thin. Add these to boiling broth.
7. Add frozen wontons, bring back to boil and cook two minutes. Once again, use your own mouth...taste a wonton to make sure its not still cold. These are precooked meat so you won't need to worry about uncooked meat.
8. Serve in deep bowls and add soy sauce to taste.
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| I used about half this bag for roughly a gallon of broth. |
Soup II: ICE CREAM SOUP
1. Scoop some nice hard ice cream, your favorite flavor, in a big ole mug. Just a scoop... or two.
2. Pour cold milk over the ice cream till it's just barely covered.
3. Use a fork or spoon to smash that ice cream into the milk.
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| This is the tail end of the soup, what's left over after you've had too much. A little too runny for me at this point. Soup of the Day: Toasted Almond Fudge. |
When I was twelve years old and finally old enough to babysit neighbor kids, I got a quarter an hour to tend Sherry and Jackie Payne, even though Sherry was not much younger than I was. I taught them how to make Ice Cream Soup. That was two generations ago. Sherry told me last time I saw her that she still remembers how amazed she was that one could do such wondrous things with a mug, some milk and hard ice cream.
Tonight I lift a mug to you, my old friend Sherry Payne, and your dear brother Jack.
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| "Now that I'm grown no one can tell me I can't have ice cream for dinner." |
BONUS FACT: See how you can get three meals from a $5 Costco broiled chicken? MmmHmmm. You can do it with a fresh whole fryer as well.
