We ran out of soup! It's been on my to-do list for awhile, but the post Covid fatigue, compounded by whatever virus from Hell I caught at Christmas made even thinking of making a 5 gallon batch and canning it too exhausting to consider.
Hubby isn't real good at inventory control, either, and all my canned goods are on shelves in the basement of the main house. I brought several cases of assorted soups when we moved, but haven't added to them since.
Whoops!
Hubby ate the last jar of chili con Carne yesterday.
So, I'll be making Manhattan clam chowder this afternoon, and canning it tomorrow... good way to help heat and humidify the apartment, with high temps around zero tomorrow.
Next, I need to get a bunch of soup chicken out of the freezer (I did can up 35 quarts of chicken broth when we butchered the old hens in the fall, but we put 10 birds in the freezer, plus I have about 50# of necks and backs to use) and get a nice chicken vegetable soup made to can. I dehydrated a bunch of sweet peppers in the summer, and we still have plenty of onions and carrots from the gardens, but I had to buy potatoes! First time in probably 20 years... I badly underestimated how many potatoes my DDIL uses, and our yields are a lot lower here than on our home farm. So, I'll be ordering and planting 150# of seed potatoes in the spring.
Then, I'm planning on trying a "clone" recipe of Campbell's Bean with Bacon soup. I "hid" a few pounds of our home grown bacon when the supply started dwindling (we didn't raise hogs last summer, so are using up the last of 2021's pork), so I've got enough for that recipe, plus the clam chowder. I've even got homegrown thyme for the clam chowder.
Once I get those done, I want to bake a ham (the big hams don't get used like they should... probably because you need to plan ahead to defrost and cook them... they aren't "heat and eat" like the store bought hams) and use the one for a other bean/vegetable soup. That will probably use up the rest of the carrots! My DDIL is a wonderful gardener, but her emphasis is on fresh eating. She now sees the value in growing enough for storage (and we built a wonderful root cellar in their basement last summer, which is holding right at 41 degrees), but we still need to tweak the amount of area we devote to storage crops.
I'd like to have at least 3 cases of 4-5 different soups on the shelf by the end of the month. We go through a pint a day, generally... if we don't have it, we end up using leftovers from supper, and I've been happy to only cook supper every other day, and I'm blessed with a husband who doesn't mind eating leftovers!
If anyone thinks homesteading and self sufficiency is the "Simple life"... not exactly!
Summerthyme