Recipe for the simplest, most delicious, easy warm soup

This wonderful soup has few ingredients, costs little, is easy to make and feeds a family of four twice.

YOU WILL NEED
1.5 to 2 lbs very inexpensive beef cut for soups (can be any cut, with or without bone, as long as it is fresh and cheap)
1 large can of peeled tomatoes
2 leeks
1 bay leaf
thyme
a few peppercorns
a little salt
several quarts of water
and 3 hours of simmering time
fresh celery if you can get it

ALL YOU DO IS
fill a large pot half to three quarters full with water
throw in the meat, canned tomatoes, bay leaf, thyme and peppercorns (stab the tomatoes a few times so they break up)
simmer for 2 hours
THEN
wash and trim the leeks (make sure there is NO sand) and throw them in
wash and dice three or four stalks of celery, leaving on some leaves and throw them in.
simmer for another hour.
salt to taste and serve.

Enjoy.

Thoughts on leftovers-- and a terrific recipe for curry

First, there was the word: left-over.

Left-handed, left-footed, left-for-dead, left-at-the-alter, left behind.

Ooooheeeeh! With such associations, how could left-overs not inspire disgust?

Except, and here's a secret: some things—think wine, oak trees, two-year-olds in diapers and certain investments--improve with age. (And benefit from amortization).

Likewise with food. Many soups, stews, ragouts, my special lentils, and Lea's potato salad actually taste better on the second day. Then there's the cold pizza, lasagne or quiche that vast swathes of our population love in the morning. And cooled meats served with pickles, mustard, thick bread and a beer can't be beat. These delicacies fit more in the category of "doggie bags" from fine restaurants and should be thought of that way: easy, delicious and already paid for (cost: zero!)

Here's a favorite -- and highly flexible --recipe for a delicious curry using leftover cooked meat.

In a little oil, fry two onions and two garlic cloves; add meat cut in cubes (cooked chicken, turkey, pork, beef ); mix and sprinkle on 1 TBS curry; 1 TBS turmeric); 1 TBS flour, stir well, add coconut milk OR a little liquid cream; salt pepper; cover on lowest heat for 15 minutes. Serve with steamed rice.

Now, this recipe can be adapted. I made it with pork, but you can use leftover beef from a stew, chicken or turkey if you like. Substitute Patak's curry paste for dry spices and (I love this) add frozen peas -- Anne Marie

ps: The pretty orange pieces are cantalope, which were selling for 50 cents a piece and juicy as can be. It made a simple and healthy desert!

Celebrating great cooking in reduced circumstances.

This blog owes its existence to two delightfully contrary inspirations: the image of Scarlette O'Hara shaking a dirty turnip at a menacing sky vowing "never to go hungry again!" and a US newspaper headline proclaiming. "Veggies too expensive! Americans doomed to eat junk!"

Even in hard times, occasionally you just have to laugh.

Some of the best food ever invented has come, not from the fancy kitchens of the rich (obsessed with figuring out how to stuff humming birds into quails into chickens into peacocks into ostriches like a grotesque feathered nesting doll), but from impoverished peasants forced to get creative to feed their families, with, for example, turnips.
Like hardy Australian plants that bloom only after a devastating fire, we Americans tend show our best selves under pressure of adversity. This is true also, we believe, of our food.