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Tuesday, February 25, 2020

A Leap Month of Little Joys and Satisfactions: Thanksgiving Gravy Soup


Just to clarify, this gravy has been in the freezer (not the fridge) since November. However, I brought it out of the freezer on Friday, thinking it was a quart of refried beans (or something along those lines). To my surprise, it was a quart of our Thanksgiving turkey and bacon gravy. As gravy goes, it's very delicious. It's just hard to use an entire quart within a couple of days. 

We've been serving gravy over many of our meals. Yet, I still had about 2 cups remaining. It's tasty, but very rich. Yesterday, I had a thought to turn the rest into soup.

To thin the gravy and turn it into soup, I simmered onions, carrots, celery, and garlic in a couple of inches of water. When the veggies were cooked, I stirred in the gravy, plus some leftover cooked lentils for protein and a chunk of frozen spinach. Then I seasoned to taste.

This soup was another meal item based on using up leftovers from the fridge and freezer. It tasted great and put that lingering gravy to good use. Using up leftovers in new ways always puts a smile on my face.

As I was chopping the veggies, I got to thinking -- I do a similar thing, only in reverse, with brothy soups. I thicken leftover stock-based soups to use as gravy. I guess I just like to vary how we use our foods.

8 comments:

  1. Lili,
    I wish we were neighbors! We could chat every day about the creative things we make for our families!

    I had a bowl of slaw-like cabbage in my freezer that had shredded carrots in it. My parents gave to us just before our emergency three week stay in California this summer. I quickly sauteed it up and threw it in the freezer. So last night was the night to use that. It turned into eggroll bowls. I also had a pkg of flatbread that I turned into enchiladas using the homemade sauce from youtube parsnips and parsimony. We all liked this meal very much.

    My husband bought some mystery meat (he says they are steak but they looked like ground beef) at Daily Deals. I think tonight I will see what those are and cook them up. I had purchased a huge pork roast that had a bone in it. I deboned it but put the bone in the crockpot. That gave me a lot of tender meat and a good broth which I'll save for soup one of these days (Yes, I'll put it in the freezer).

    I keep making room in the freezer and then fill it up with good deals, ahhh.

    Alice

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  2. Lili, that was a great idea to make soup and add the leftover gravy! I wouldn't have thought of that. It looks so good! You have such a knack for using leftovers. I always get good ideas from reading here.

    And Alice, that's awesome that you could use the shredded cabbage and carrots in eggroll bowls. Great save! I wouldn't have thought of that either, but now I know.

    Angie

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  3. As a soup lover, I started salivating when I read about your soup-from-gravy. :)

    Alice, I'm curious about your eggroll bowls. How do you make them?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Your soup looks delicious. I have used leftover gravy for soup before and it makes a nice base. I'm fresh out of gravy these days, so I'll just have to use the more traditional stock when I make soup later this week.

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  5. Hi Alice,
    Good work on using up what you have! Those egg roll bowls sound especially tasty. Do you a sauce that you serve with them? Like a dipping sauce that comes with egg rolls in a restaurant?
    That would be fun if we were neighbors! I can just imagine how many of our conversations might go!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hi Kris,
    Thank you. I'm a soup-lover, too. Soup is my first pick when I'm thinking of what to make for myself.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi Live and Learn,
    I like stock-based soups, too! Any type of soup will be delicious, IMO!

    ReplyDelete

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