Leftovers soup

When I was growing up, we had a set of Compton's Precyclopedia where each entry for a word (e.g. Cooking in the C-volume or Fire in the F-volume) contained not only facts but fables, poems and stories about those words. Because my siblings once accused me of not reading, I bugged them by memorizing and reciting parts of the Precyclopedia -- or at least the first lines of entires. For example, the first lines of the Precyclopedia entry for Cooking is this now quite outmoded statement:

Who cooks dinner?

Mother does, but sometimes, Father might.

Another entry, maybe on Cooking or on Stones was a story about "Stone soup". 

As the story goes, there was once a poor traveller that came to a village and had nowhere to sleep, so he knocked at a door to ask for lodging for the night. A poor woman opened the door, but upon finding out that the man didn't have any money, she was about to turn him away. "Wait," the traveller said, fumbling for something in his stuffsack. "In my travels I came upon this very special stone, that makes a very delectible soup. If you'd allow me to cook you a dinner with it, it is yours as a payment for your kindness." The woman looked skeptically at the stone, which seemed like any other smooth pebble, but she decided to give the man the benefit of the doubt. "Alright," she said, "but the soup has to be good; otherwise it's out on the street with you!"

The traveller rubbed his hands together and asked for a cauldron of water to be put on a boil at the fireplace. The stone was dropped in the cauldron to cook, and every now and then, the man would sip a small teaspoon of the liquid, to taste. "Let me taste it too," the woman insisted. "No not yet," the traveller said, "it needs a little bit of salt." So the woman got him some salt, which went into the soup. "Hmm, it is starting to taste better. But if you happen to have some scraps of meat, I think the soup would be a little better still," said the man. "Alright, I'll see what I've got. But that soup has to be good!", the woman answered. An old meat bone with some scraps went into the cauldron. 

The man continued to taste the soup and later on he asked, "You don't happen to have any potatoes, do you? Just a little bit will do to heighten the taste of the soup. The stone is really rendering its flavors now!". "Oh my! Is it really?" the woman asked. "Yes I think I may have an old potato and a carrot...". Diced, the vegetables went in the cauldron as well.

And so it went -- I think the travleller may have asked for a little bit more to spice up his Stone soup -- and after a long evening of anticpation, the traveller finally declared the soup ready.

"Oh, it's delicious!", the host exclaimed. "To think it was made out of a stone!"

---

I thought of that story as I cooked this evening's soup, grabbing stuff I had in the refrigerator to turn "something out of nothing"! Voila! Leftovers soup!

Ingredients and method:

Mince and sauté an old onion in butter. Grate a leftover sad-looking carrot and sauté with the onion. Add water, not too much, and half a bouillon cube (chicken or vegetable). Look inside the freezer, where there are leftover bacon strips that you fried earlier in the week (I freeze everything!). Cut and dump into the soup, don't even bother defrosting them. Scrounge around in the cupboards, and grab that old bottle of dried mung beans you don't have the heart to throw away but are years old. Rinse and throw some into the soup. Let boil and simmer until mung beans are soft (Watch TV in the meantime, but add some water halfway to prevent drying out). Scrounge around the refrigerator where you see a glass of milk that you saved for tea, half a lemon, and some leftover cheese. You decide that since this whole thing is an experiment, these can go in too (just a dash of lemon though!). Take the chance and press a garlic clove in the soup too, and season it with freshly ground pepper. 

Serve the Leftovers soup with homemade croutons made of leftover bread that you froze (Again, I freeze everything), and -- need I say this? -- whatever other leftovers you can find. In my case, my last two last ham slices made a good sandwich on the side.

Enjoy, and think of how nice it is to have your own (and may I say, delicious) recipe for "Stone soup", without the stone!