cheap student soup

Ok, you may not have realised it yet, but I have what is perhaps the most complete pantry of any cheap/ broke student ever. I need to make it go away.

It's also really cold here, so I wanted soup. Too lazy to wait for chickpeas to cook from dry, too hungry to do anything really involved.

So I went shopping in my pantry shelf, and thru my fridge stuff.

I found all sorts of goodies, and decided to make lentil soup.

You can put just about anything in this- even meat, meaty broth, cat hair, whatever.

But I carefully restrained myself from dumping in brussels sprouts, broccoli, and cabbage. Trust me on this- the makes very stinky.

What did I use then?

One (1) big ass pot
Two (2) cups split lentils (give or take)
One (1) can peeled crushed tomatoes in sauce
One (1) whole onion, diced
One (1) zucchini, diced
One (1) bunch of unslimy spinaches rescued from the rotter, sliced into ribbons
and
Two (2) gallons water (give or take)- that's about 7L for those of you with the funny numbers

I took all that stuff, dumped it in the pot. Stuck it on the stove, over medium heat. Added spicyness as follows-

dash (really little one) wasabi powder
dash (really BIG one) cayenne pepper
dash (dash sized) garlic powder
1/2 t cumin (dashed, of course, so just a guess)
lots of cajun seasoning. Again. Probably about 2T

Oh, and a glug each of white and basalmic vinegar. And a glug of oil.

Then I covered it and wandered off.

About half an hour later, I opened it up, stirred it around, turned the temp down to low and added-

One (1) un-icky potato
One (1) nearly icky tomato
One (1) heaping dash dried cilantro.
And
One (1) whole hell of a lot of salt. I think maybe 3 heaping T worth of sea salt.
Oh, an a dash (really big- ~1T) curry powder, since the spinach made it smell like ass.

Note, at this point it was very spicy and had no flavor. If you a meaty person, this taken care of by searing your meat first, or something. If you unlazy, you can add flavor by roasting the veggies first. Or by carmelizing some/ all the onion. I lazy, tho.


So about 4 hours after I started, I decide that tasteless soup should have bread. So I pull out... molases, rye flour, white flour, honey, salt, yeast, and my fav. bowl.

worked out to ~

1T molases in way too hot water (~1c)
1T honey (again, in the water)
1T yeast (once the water cooled a bit)

The bowl got...

2C (about) white flour,
1C rye flour,
1T sea salt
1t table salt.

and after that it was just normal bread making- mix, kneed, raise, beat down, rise, shape, bake (too fast, wrong temp- again) eat.

So while I was (not really) waiting for the oven to heat, I pulled out a trusty frozen head of roasted garlics. Yes, the whole thing. popped the yummy insides out of the papery clove wrappers, mooshed them a bit and dumped the into the pot. Yum. And some more salt.

So now, 8 hours after I started, I have almost 2 gallons of (very spicy) tasty soup, most of a loaf of (not fully cooked) yummy brown bread, and a very full tummy from when I wandered to the grocery store halfway thru and picked up a bag of chips and some white choco chips.

Anyone want cheap soup?

I figure the cost to make it here was... $7ish for the soup, another buck or two for the bread?

j.