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Ontario, Canada
I am a wife, mother and grandma who enjoys the many aspects of homemaking. A variety of interests and hobbies combined with travel keep me active. They reflect the importance of family, friends, home and good food.
Cook ingredients that you are used to cooking by other techniques, such as fish, chicken, or hamburgers. In other words be comfortable with the ingredients you are using.
--Bobby Flay

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  • [March 19, 2020] - Effective Mar 17, this blog will no longer accept advertising. The reason is very simple. If I like a product, I will promote it without compensation. If I don't like a product, I will have no problem saying so.
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Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Souped Up Tomato Soup

A well stocked pantry is always an inspiration for my cooking. I have a large walk-in pantry that I'm in and out of several times most days. Quite often I get a glimpse of something in the pantry that forms the basis for a meal. This is one reason why menu planning with the exception of special events simply does not work for me. At heart I love the creativity of pantry cooking!

souped up tomato soupSouped Up Tomato Soup

I have posted many times about the various foods I can but sometimes how I use them is not always apparent. Since home canned foods play such a huge role in my pantry it only stands to reason that many meals are inspired from home canned foods. A couple of days ago I wanted a quick to prepare meal. Home canned tomato soup caught my eye for dinner but as Canadian Chef Michael Smith would say not any tomato soup, a special tomato soup. Michael Smith shows how to cook without a recipe on on Food Network Canada's Chef at Home. He gets his inspiration from one ingredient then builds from there. This is such a wonderful way to cook!

I started with home canned tomato soup made from scratch using garden fresh ingredients. The taste of this condensed soup beats store bought condensed tomato soup hands down! I decided to build on this soup base to create a souped up tomato soup. I added in home canned mushrooms, corn niblets, broccoli and red onion along with a bit of milk and Rooster Brand Instant Noodles to create a tasty, meatless soup that took less that 15 minutes to prepare. If you recall these are a healthier version of instant noodles than Ramen noodles Rooster Instant Noodles contain 0% fat making this a healthy soup as well.

Method: I heated 2 - 500 ml jars tomato soup then stirred in home canned mushrooms, frozen corn niblets, broccoli pieces and chopped red onion. Once the broccoli was lightly cooked I stirred in 500 ml of whole milk and brought to just a simmer then stirred in ¼ package of Rooster Instant Noodles. Cook 1 minute then ladle into bowls for serving.


2 food lovers commented:

Inspired by eRecipeCards said...

I am awful at menu planning.. tried it twice and failed by the third meal both times

Garden Gnome said...

Menu planning is always tooted as been a good way to save money especially for grocery shopping. However, my experience is that it doesn't work with a well stocked pantry. I don't like feeling locked into having meatloaf if I feel like fish that night, if you know what I mean. Menu planning does help with entertaining though but that's about the only time I use it.