A couple of weeks ago we roasted a couple of chickens for the husband’s lunches.  When he had taken all the meat off the bone, we decided to make stock in our effort to be more frugal.  We used rosemary, carrots, onions, etc. and we were very proud of ourselves, we skimmed off the fat, let it cool, put it in containers and froze it. I put it in the fridge last night so that I could make soup today – for the very first time, I might add.  I had planned a vegetable/noodle soup in the chicken stock but it didn’t quite work out that way.

I chopped a bunch of celery, three onions and some baby carrots and put them into the crockpot.  I took the chicken stock out of the fridge and was a little dismayed to see so much fat in it.  I opened the lid and didn’t like the way it smelled, so unfortunately I had to toss it.  If you knew how much I hate waste, you’d know how hard that was for me.  But I don’t ever take a chance with food, if I’m a little iffy about it.

What to do?

I already had a beautiful trinity of carrots, onions and celery and I was determined to have soup on this rainy, chilly, lazy day.

I opened the pantry and saw that I only had one container of chicken broth, I poured it over the vegetables, but it barely covered them.  Hmm. With an adventurous spirit, I grabbed a bunch of stuff and decided to just play. Here’s what I did.

1 package of chicken broth 32 oz. (or homemade if you’re better at that than I am)
2 28 oz. cans of crushed tomatoes
1 bunch of celery, washed, trimmed, chopped
Carrots – I used baby carrots, about 20 of them, sliced
3 med. onions chopped
2 teaspoons garlic powder
2 big pinches of dried parsley
1 box of Ditalini

Put carrots, onion, celery, chicken broth, and tomatoes in crock pot.  Set it on high and let it cook for an hour.  After an hour, add the garlic powder and parsley. Let cook for 4 hours.

From the research I did, most of what I read said to cook the pasta in a separate pot and then add to the soup, but to me that sort of seemed like it defeated the purpose of the crock pot.  This is supposed to be a one pot meal, right?  So I added the pasta – still keeping the setting on high and after about 15 minutes, the pasta was done, but you couldn’t really call it “soup” anymore.  I set the crockpot on warm, stirred it and then decided what to do next.  There were a couple of different ideas, but I decided to just plate it, add some salt and pepper, grate some parmesan cheese on top, and eat it.

It was delicious.

Perfect if you have small children or aren’t a huge fan of spicy foods.  Next time I think I’m going to chop fresh garlic into the vegetables at the beginning and maybe add some hot sauce.  And instead of parm, maybe sour cream… and a handful of fresh cilantro and a squeeze of lime.  There are so many things you could do with this.

Eating it is the best thing to with it though. :tongue:

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