Garbage soup

Those of you who know me best, know that I HATE to waste food.  I don't buy it so I can just throw it away, so anything I can do to use it up instead of throw it away appeals to me.

I was watching Food Network once (I don't even remember what show) and this guy was making a pizza.  In a thick New York accent, he said, "We call this GA-Bage pizza.  We throw everything on it!"  Genius struck my brain, and I thought, "What a great way to use up leftovers!"  

So, now when we are starting to accumulate lots of leftovers, and no one is eating them, and they have surely, surely purchased their one way tickets to the garbage disposal, I know it's time to make some garbage.  Sometimes it's garbage pizza.  Sometimes it's garbage pasta or rice.  Sometimes it's garbage bread.  Tonight, it's garbage soup.  

I love garbage soup because it's always different, and it really sparks my creativity in joining the flavors together.  Plus, (BIG plus!) my kids really like garbage soup.  

Ok, so like I said, it's always different.  But here's a sample of what garbage day in our house looks like: 

Here is this weeks leftovers:  (from left to right:) (in the stack of containers) canned corn, pork roast in au jus, white rice, and some kidney beans, some cottage cheese and sour cream that was a day over expired, (in the bags) vegetables that were about to die: some chopped tomatoes, onion, a couple withered potatoes, carrots, celery, and a small handful of grated cheese.  Also, some salsa that was expired (there was only about a 1/2 cup left.) 

 First, I chopped up all the veggies and fried them in a little oil (with the lid on) until they were soft.  It's also really good to let them brown a little.  It gives a good flavor. 

 Then, while I went and practiced my piano, I let the veggies cook (On the left is some potato and carrot cooked for baby food for Iggy)

When the veggies are done I dumped in all the container items.  Part of the charm of this particular soup was using the au jus from the pork roast, so I just dumped the whole thing in.  It's that gelatinous brown mass in the center.

Diced, stewed tomatoes are the magic secret ingredient.  This is what makes a pile of garbage, soup.  Sometimes I add two cans, depending on the liquidity of the soup thus far.  Tonight, I just needed one (because of the pork roast). I also added a few cans of water, until it was as soupy as I wanted it to be.

 Eh? Eh?  it's starting to look appetizing!

Another secret ingredient:  if you cover it with enough seasoning, they won't even suspect they're eating garbage!

Dev is a happy helper.  She's being trained up in the ways of the garbage soup jedi.

 Another good flavor adder:  salsa.  Gives it a little kick

I let all these ingredients simmer together for awhile (until I was tired of practicing the piano.) and then it looked like this:  (starting to look tasty!)

right before we were ready to eat, I added the cottage cheese, sour cream, and leftover shredded cheese.  

Then it looked like this: (ooh! and it smelled really good, too!)

Once in the bowls, I topped each one with more cheese.  It was so good, we each had several bowls of it, and there wasn't much left over.  Just enough for the Hubby to take to work tomorrow.  And they didn't even know that what they were eating were the very things in the fridge they had been shunning all week. Bwa-ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!

Bub-bye Leftovers!