When its cold, windy, frosty and rainy, there is nothing like a big pot of warm soup! As a child I always loved the story of ‘stone soup’… although I think it was a fancy way for my mother and grandmother to serve leftovers! For the miliary of our family they might wish to call it the ‘rock soup method!’
“U.S. Army General George S. Patton, Jr. referred to the “rock soup method” of acquiring resources for attacks in the face of official disapproval by his superiors for offensive operations. In the military context, he sent units forward ostensibly on reconnaissance missions, to later reinforce them when resistance was met and eventually turned small scale probes into all out attacks….”
There are other versions of the story of Stone Soup:
“The story is most commonly known as nail soup in Scandinavian and Northern European countries. In these versions, the main character is typically a tramp looking for food and lodgings, who convinces an old woman that he will make nail soup for the both of them if she would just add a few ingredients for the garnish. In Eastern Europe the variation of the story (having more in common with the Northern European rendition) is called axe soup, with an axe being the catalyst. In Russian tradition a soldier eats axe kasha (Каша из топора).”
In any event, it leaves a lot to you imagination. Large kettle soups were very big in old world european inns. An interesting story concerns one inn near the Spanish border in France where travelers came far and wide to try their soups made in a large kettle. Oddly enough, the kettle was cleaned once a year to great fan fare!
Our soup, this day, contains a wide variety of yummy things: leftover meat*, short grain and wild rice, diced potatoes, a few jalapeno slices ( you can see one in the picture), celery, diced linguisa sausage, chicken stock, some choice legumes, a small jar of pimentoes, bell pepper, onion, garlic, red beans, pinto beans, black beans… and some very nice falorings.
The nice thing is that you can never really cook this soup too long… it just gets better!
Roger
* for those who buy large sections of meat and trim and cut your own, you will always have meat that is left over that is perfect for our SOUP! I had a wonderful 7 standing rib and I trimmed to leave the ‘eye’ of the prime rib, the ribs and what is reffered to as the ‘lip’ although we always called this fatty area the ‘tail.’ The meat I used this day came from the leftover tails which I throughly trimmed of fat.