Best soup in the world

A cooking tip I picked up from somewhere or other. Every time you would normally discard some sort of leftover vegetable matter, instead of tossing it in the garbage (or even in the composter, if you're more virtuous), dump it in a largish ziploc bag in the freezer. Carrot and potato peelings? Toss them in. Lettuce gone too wilty to eat in a salad? Chop roughly and toss them in. The woody ends of cilantro or celery? In it goes!

When the bag is full, three or more cups, toss all the bits and pieces into a pot with an equivalent amount of water. Bring to a boil, then simmer for at least an hour until everything is soft.

Then you take your immersion blender (I got one for my birthday from my wonderful older daughter), and puree it all up.

Voila! Instant, lovely thick soup stock!

Add what flavouring seems appropriate. Because today's batch had a lot of ginger peels (which I did remove prior to pureeing), garlic, and cilantro, I spiced with cumin, coriander, a little salt and a sploosh of lime concentrate. They just seemed to "go" with the flavours of the thing.

If you want some chewable bits in your soup, toss in last night's leftovers. Our soup had wild rice and butter chicken, plus some carrots that had seen better days, and some nearing-freezer-burn-ish cauliflower and broccoli.

When I serve soup to the smallest ones, I generally tear a quarter-slice of bread (stale crusts are good for this) into the bottom of the bowl, and pour soup on top. I let it sit around for a few minutes to cool and get the bread good and soggy -- when they eat it, there's very little liquid left to drip and spill, so they can mostly feed themselves.

Ella and Josh had three bowls. (Theirs had no bread.) Owen and Milan had a bowl and a half. Eliana had about half a bowl, but then she has a smaller appetite generally than those four other eating machines...

The thing I love about this is it's something so tasty and nutritious, and yet made almost entirely out of things that would normally be thrown out. Never mind all those vitamins, and the fact that the kids love it. I just feel so damned virtuous every time I serve it!