Building a Soup the Quick and Easy Way

Homemade soups are wonderful ~ I’d probably eat soup at least once a day if it was on hand! Lately, I’ve been experimenting with building homemade-like soup from store-bought ingredients, leftovers and resources already in the kitchen cab – kinda like a Sandra Lee Semi-Homeade approach!

►For example, I’m serving chicken soup and buttered bread this evening. Here’s what I’m combining for the soup:

leftover baked chicken breasts and rice

32 oz container chicken broth + one 32 oz can water

26 oz can cream of chicken soup

1 can kernel corn, with juices

12 or so baby carrots, diced

►Now what? Just put it all in a big stockpot and heat til boiling. Butter your bread and there ya go!

Do you like to make soup? Any other shortcut ideas for me?

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Hugs & Yums, Laurie

LEFTOVER PIZZA BECOMES FANCY ITALIAN SIDE!

Planning to serve spaghetti with marinara, salad and some sort of garlic bread tonight, I surveyed my fridge for ingredients.  Oh!  A Domino’s box!  With 3-4 pizza slices left over from last night’s lazy dinner splurge!  Hmmm, pizza’s Italian like spaghetti… maybe I can dress up the normal ho-hum spaghetti dinner?!

Enter my cookie cutters.  I ended up using a flower cookie cutter to cut shapes out of the pizza slices, topping them with a little extra Italian spices and grated parm cheese and baking them in the over at 350 degrees for 3-4 minutes.  I also cut some flower leaves out of the extra pizza bits.  Springtime Italian, mangia!

 

Yes, the fam was impressed (at least til they figured out what I did!).  Adding something new and unexpected to a routinely served meal keeps the kiddoes on their toes and, most importantly, keeps them from noticing the same ol’, same ol’! 

Hugs & Yums, Laurie