"Use it up, Wear it out, Make it do, or Do without"

This catchy phrase was one of my grandmother's favorite phrases. Now as a grown woman, mom, wife and farm manager this phrase if repeated almost everyday in one form or another.

I am all about making a dollar stretch and my farmer often gets tickled about how I won't throw this away, or how I reuse that, but one of his and my favorite "freebies" is "Refrigerator Soup".

Yesterday, my son and his girlfriend came over to help us take down and clean up two trees in our neighbors yard.  We were just about finished cleaning up when the fire department tones dropped and my farmer man, aka the fire chief, had to leave to go help a poor soul who had rolled their vehicle.  Thankfully, we learned when he returned home after dark, that the driver was a young man and was fortunately not injured....can't say the same for his vehicle.  Anyhow, when he left we finished up cleaning up the limbs and logs, visited with our neighbor a bit and loaded up the chainsaw, oil and such in the bucket of the tractor and headed home.

I had gotten chicken out to make some awesome paprika chicken, but upon returning home I realized supper would after 8:30 p.m. if I started that paprika chicken. So we improvised!  I cut the chicken up, a skill a lot of people really need to learn, you can watch a video here to learn how to cut up a whole chicken and we fried that chicken.  My farmer man came home while I was cooking and I was able to provide a nice, healthy meal of fried chicken, green beans, spinach and homemade applesauce for my working crew.

In cutting that chicken apart, I removed the back, as shown in the video link above, and some of the skin from the breast. Now, going back to grandma's favorite phrase, you don't just throw that out! No ma'am!  You fill the crock pot with water and place the chicken back and skin in the crock pot.  Allow it to cook overnight to make some scrumptious, healthy bone broth. This morning I fished out all the bones and the skin and added about 3 cups of water to make about 6 cups of broth.  I also added two chicken bouillon cubes for some added flavor.

Yes, that is a crescent wrench in front of my crock pot. Remember grandma's saying....This is "make it do" ;-)  The crock pot is in great shape, but the knob had gotten cracked. No worries!  Every homemaker has a good tool drawer in the kitchen!

Now...to make it refrigerator soup, go to the refrigerator and pull out any leftover veggies you may have.  I had some peas and carrots and green beans left over so they went into the pot.  I like celery in my soups so I save the celery leaves especially for soup....those got thrown in.  I added a few more carrots just to give it a little more volume. Seasoned with a teaspoon of poultry seasoning, some parsley and some garlic. I may or may not add some noodle closer to suppertime!  If you have some left over rice that would be great too!  Add whatever veggies you have in the fridge....the sky is the limit! I personally LOVE cheese dumplings floating on top of refrigerator soup. ;-)

Just needs some noodles, rice, potatoes or dumplings!  What ever you have on hand or leftover.

This is essentially a "free" meal and let me tell you....the house smells heavenly!  The homemakers of the past always found ways to reuse, repurpose or recycle the items they had in their homes.  They were green before green was a thing!

I would like to encourage you to take a look at what you have, how you use it, how else you could use it or turn it into a totally new item! Learn a new skill and use it.  I would love to hear from others who are thrifty and reuse, repurpose and recycle.  Send me your ideas and we just might be posting a story about how we tried it.