Mexican Soup Week

Last week we had several main dish salads.  This week we're doing soup.  I find salads or soups as a main course are wonderful for weight control.  We always have a salad with the soup and soups can be both nourishing and filling.  I've noticed that soups that call for 4- 5 cups of chicken broth can be less than frugal if you have to buy the expensive broth.  Make your own from scraps if you really want to save.  


Here are two yummy recipes for Mexican soups.  We enjoyed them both. Yucatan Style Chicken, Lime and Orzo Soup  
This soup is not sour in spite of the lime juice.  Leave in pith and seeds of the pepper according to how hot you like it.   We garnished with sour cream and used tortilla chips instead of bread.     It's very colorful with the tomato, cilantro and pappers.  


Here's another:  Black Bean Soup with Chorizo and Chicken     The chorizo flavors the whole soup, with mild hints of thyme and bay leaf.  We used our neighbor's thyme ("Pick some any time!" )    I garnished this soup with cilantro, too, for color and flavor.  No use having a whole bunch go to waste.  We put avocado in the salad.  It wasn't quite ripe when we brought it home, but a short stint in a plastic bag with an apple was all it took.  You do know this trick, don't you.  Apples emit a ripening agent that will help other fruits to ripen.

Work in the garden and a walk in the coolish June day.  Rewarded myself with watching soccer, golf and baseball.  And the soup!  

Yours in frugality, 


The Cheeseparer 

The Ham Bone, Symbol of Eternity

Is it weird to blog a ham bone? Not the dance, but the real thing? The photo shows the ham bone just beginning to cook in the pot of bean soup. This is a frugal meal. Note large sprinkling of black pepper. Zowza!

We had a ham for Christmas instead of the prime rib roast beef that we usually cook. Actually, it was half a ham. Cost $14.00 instead of the $40+ dollars the beef would have set us back.
2 main meals for 3 people, then a few sandwiches, then ham for breakfast. After a few days, there was a big meaty bone and I removed enough for a ham and broccoli casserole--made with a cheese sauce and quite yummy.

Cooked the ham bone with some pea beans, lots of onion, garlic, some carrot and celery and a little fat (my bad!) and broth I'd saved from the baking of the ham. Add more chicken broth and a few springs of fresh rosemary and some dried thyme from the garden. Lots of black pepper. Yum! Cut the meat off the bone (ate some in the process) and had so much I put some aside for ham and eggs (2 meals as things evolved) and back went the chopped ham into the soup.

Died and gone to heaven. 8 servings, plus two breakfasts, and the casserole still to come. 4 servings there. Have we lost count? That $14 just keeps on giving. Double zowsa!

I think I've counted 32 servings here, folks. I've also got a good ham, potato and broccoli casserole recipe, but since we are in quasi-diet mode, I'll skip the potatoes.

So living it up with the ham has been a cheeseparing activity.

A wag once described eternity as "two people and a ham." My mom never saw the humor in that. She thought two people and a ham was great.

As ever,

The Cheeseparer

Couponing

Today's Boston Globe had beaucoup coupon sections in the Sunday supplements, but out of 4 sections, I only glommed on to 10 - 12 coupons. Most of them are not for food. Lots of vitamins and health "stuff," cosmetics, weird things I would never buy. And the food coupons are invariably for the most processed of foods. No one ever has $1 off on a bag of carrots, although I did have one tomato coupon this fall.

Sometimes you find canned soup or cleaning products, and some paper and plastic. Yogurt is often available by coupon. Haven't seen cat food for ages. It's not on sale either, but we did buy 24 cans and get $1 off on Fancy Feast. Such a deal. One kitty is diabetic and we try to buy cat food without glutins. It's weird standing in the cat food aisle looking for specific flavors (each with its own color). Kitty doesn't care.

The best deals, food-wise, are the BOGOs. Buy One Get One in retail parlance. Chickens and pork tenderloin are particiularly coveted, but just about anything I regularly buy is welcome. Of course bottles of Tabasco would be useless. We are entering a 5 Tabasco bottle marriage. That's a lot of years.

Most weeks I'm too lazy to shop the 3-5 supermarkets and cherry pick specials. I stay with my main store and bop into the others if I'm driving by or in the neighborhood.

We had a half-ham over Christmas and the bone with plenty of meat clinging to it will be utilized for bean soup this week. From scratch with the soaking of the beans. I add lots of onion, and some garlic and carrots. Always yummy. Don't forget the herbs.

Some recipes call for a Parmesan Cheese rind, but that implies that you buy a big mother of a Parmesan Cheese, not exactly a frugal purchase. (See Photo).

The Cheeseparer, paring away