Zero Waste Soup Day Routine
All summer long I loathe to turn on my oven or to have a pot boiling on the stove. It just seems counterintuitive to further warm up my already hot kitchen. My partner protests against even soup-ish foods during the summer — no curry, no shepard’s pie — at least until September.
But once the sweaters come out of the closets, we can call it soup weather and I begin to crack open the oven and crank up the burners again. Now, all the sweet yeasty homemade bread, and the deep, warm smells of soup can once again profuse the kitchen.
While this article is titled “Soup Day” — soup and bread go hand in hand in my book and I hope you will bear with me for a bit of a bread discussion as well. One of the goals I had for myself in 2022 was to get good enough at baking bread that I could forgo store bought bread entirely. This was in part to avoid the plastic wrap that many breads come with and in part to have more control over the quality of ingredients I feed my family. While I did get good at baking, I struggled to keep up with bread demands during the summer months when I spend so much time outdoors tending the garden and chasing my boys.
This is where Artisan Bread in 5-Minutes a Day comes in. Since I have started using recipes from this book, my bread baking routine has been greatly simplified. The main innovation to this technique is to prep more dough than you need for a single loaf so you can store it in the fridge ripping off a chunk, forgoing kneading, letting it rise and baking directly when you want a fresh loaf. This dough even makes great pizza (see below) — greatly simplifying pizza day routine too.
Now on to soup day — I start my morning with broth. I pull the bag of vegetables scraps I’ve collected from the previous week’s vegetable preparation out of the freezer and put that into a stock pot. I also check the fridge for any veg that is looking worse for wear, chop it a bit and toss that in too. This week I was lucky enough to have a ham bone leftover from a roast my aunt had given us from her farm. I pour over all that goodness just enough water to cover and bring it to a low boil for several hours.
Once the broth has had time to cool to a tolerable temperature, I pour it out over a colander inside a glass bowl collecting all the liquid and discarding the boiled vegetables. This week, the worms in our vermicompost that resides in our basement got a good meal but if the worms are full up on veggies, I will also toss these scraps into our regular outdoor compost pile.
Then, at lunch time it’s time to get the bread going. I take out the dough, shape it and let it rise as it warms to room temperature. While that’s taking care of itself I’m putting my toddler down for his nap. I come back, preheat the oven and bake the dough on our pizza stone.
The high temperature of the oven quick bakes the wet dough creating a crackling crust and moist interior, plus an added benefit of warming our chilly kitchen. The bread then rests on a cooling rack until dinner.
Once my youngest is up from his nap, it’s about time to get the soup going. I give my children something to work on and I chop my vegetables. Again, I save the scraps for next week’s soup, sautee some onion and garlic, toss in the rest of the vegetables and enough broth to cover the solid bits and simmer away. Voila, tasty soup with deep flavor and minimal waste.
Leftovers get eaten by me for lunch (no one else seems to like leftover soup around here!?), or if there is enough, they are frozen for an even simpler soup day of the future.
While we are far from zero-waste in our household, we are gradually learning ways to lessen the waste we generate. Growing our own vegetables and participating in a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) is a large part of that. By eating close to home, we have developed a deeper appreciation towards our food and a greater respect for the environment around us.
