THE STONE SOUP FOR THE RECESSION

According to the story, some travelers come to a village, carrying nothing more than an empty pot. Upon their arrival, the villagers are unwilling to share any of their food stores with the hungry travelers. The travelers fill the pot with water, drop a large stone in it, and place it over a fire in the village square. One of the villagers becomes curious and asks what they are doing. The travelers answer that they are making "stone soup", which tastes wonderful, although it still needs a little bit of garnish to improve the flavor, which they are missing. The villager doesn't mind parting with just a little bit to help them out, so it gets added to the soup. Another villager walks by, inquiring about the pot, and the travelers again mention their stone soup which hasn't reached its full potential yet. The villager hands them a little bit of seasoning to help them out. More and more villagers walk by, each adding another ingredient. Finally, a delicious and nourishing pot of soup is enjoyed by all.

How about having a stone soup party during this recession? Think vegetable broth which you can do other bits to make it a heartier soup, maybe the carcass of a roast chicken to enhance the taste?

Broth is one of the easiest, healthiest things you can make in your kitchen. It reduces waste, tastes good, and can be used in any dish that calls for chicken broth and many that call for water. It’s free to make–you make it out of scraps you would throw away–and once you start making it, you’ll wonder why you ever spent money on canned broth.
Here’s how: When we start to get low on broth, we put a one-gallon plastic container in the freezer. Then I start putting all the vegetable parts in there that we would otherwise throw away. A couple of rules on this: we always make sure the vegetables are clean before we throw them in, we don’t use flavorless parts like garlic peels, and we never put anything that is rotting into the container.
So what do we put in? Pretty much everything. That includes the ends of onions (onion skins gives it that delicious brown color), the tops of celery, garlic slivers, wilting cabbage leaves, potato peels, stems from herbs, and so on. The only vegetable parts we have learned not to throw in are artichoke stems because they make the broth bitter. we would also avoid tomatoes, hot peppers, and mint. Otherwise, everything seems to enhance the broth.