This was one of Dad’s favorite sayings, one we use often today. I made a tasty baked chicken with wild rice stuffing along with a big stir fry. We ate and ate, but there was still some meat left over, of course. So I took out all the leftover stuffing and tossed the chicken in a stock pot with water and set it on the old wood stove to simmer. Yesterday afternoon, I strained off the broth, let the carcass cool down on a cookie sheet, then picked off and cut up the meat. (I found a lot!) I then dumped the meat back in the stock pot with the broth, added herbs, diced onions, shallots, and spices along with a pint of drained carrots and a half-pint of mixed corn and peas. I let that simmer for about half an hour then tossed in a couple of handfuls of thick noodles. When they were very tender, we started in eating. Sigh. Wonderful. And I have enough left over for lunch today.

Soup_9996

Will and I are busy writing down all the new varieties we will plant and trial this year. A few folks have sent us some of their old family heirloom seeds and we are especially anxious to try these. How exciting! We’ve found some very rare, wonderful new-to-us vegetables and flowers. (By the way, if any of you do have family heirloom seeds we’d just love to give them a try and see if we can pass them on to others if they do well for us. We simply hate to have so many great varieties go extinct every day.) — Jackie

12 COMMENTS

  1. Donna,

    I’ll give it some thought. I know we sure use up a lot of leftovers and I don’t like the “same-old” recipe every time. The next chicken will be baked whole, then leftovers made into chicken enchiladas, THEN soup.

  2. Anita,

    I haven’t gotten my Territorial catalog yet but I have noticed that several seed houses are carrying it this year, including Baker Creek. I know we sure love all the beautiful, unusual colors! I simply LOVE to pick and husk it. It’s always a surprise when you pull down the dried husks! Just like a birthday party!!!

  3. Rick Riley,

    We use carrots in about everything as not only do we love them and they are pretty in recipes but we easily grow lots and lots of them every year. Win=win situation.

    (Oh, by the way, don’t despair, your book is in the works; we were kind of broke over the holidays so I didn’t order my box of books as soon as I figured I would. The minute my box comes in, yours goes out! I promise!)

  4. Laurie,

    I’d love to have some of your old-time limas although we do have a challenge growing limas here because of the cool climate. We absolutely LOVE to receive heritage seeds from folks as we sure don’t want them to go extinct as so many do each and every day.

  5. I cooked a chicken yesterday and have plans for pot pie one night and then soup. I still think you should do a cookbook dedicated to using up leftovers in new ways. I get stuck in several recipes instead of thinking of new ideas. Beef seems to be my worst one.

  7. Miss Jackie, That pot of chicken soup looks like lunch is about to be served. For a second I thought I could smell it…..YUM!!! Glad you added the carrots. I think they go great in most anything called soup or stew…. Rick

  9. I did exactly the same thing and now we are on night 3 where I strained the soup- made gravy out of the stock/liquid and used the rest of the meat and veggies from the soup along with some extra peas- and used your pie crust recipe to make a chicken pot pie- delicious!!!

  10. We seriously need to black our woodstove too! We grow a variety of lima bean that came from my partner’s great great grandfather, grown in N Carolina. He has never heard a name for it, but if you are interested, we’ll be happy to send you some.

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