Friday Soup

When I got the college tuition bill for The Girl , I realized we were going to have to go back to cutting corners and expenses big time!  I'll have to take the knobs off the dryer so I'm not tempted to use it and just hang laundry instead. I need to trim the grocery bill back from $150 a week to $100 (or less).  Make sure the thermostat doesn't go below 78 - tough, since we have some 100 degree days in the forecast.  Recycle more, spend less, blah, blah, blah.  But sometimes these challenges help us to be more creative! So here's an idea from my frugal mom called "Friday Soup". Simple idea, really.  You take the leftover meat and veggies from whatever you cooked for the week, add in some reserved stock (or, just use boullion cubes and water), add pasta or rice.  Tonight our soup had chicken, broccoli, carrots, and (mostly penne) pasta.

  I brought the soup ingredients to a boil, adjusted the seasonings, and added pasta to cook for about 10 minutes.  I made cornbread - next week I will make garlic toast so I don't have to turn the oven on.  The whole dinner cost about $3.

Wow - pure love in a bowl - more like Chicken and noodles than soup and it felt so good on my sore throat!
  With  the temps climbing, we won't have soup again for a while, but I'm sure I can come up with a similar frugal Friday dish for the fam.