El's Budget Hearty Vegetable Soup

Micro-safe soup cup by Sistema, HIGHLY recommended!

As I mentioned earlier, my house move resulted in some very soggy frozen vegetables that I needed to use up. The soup they created was delicious and made lots of leftovers, so I figured I'd share how I made it. It's not rocket surgery - often my cooking is by "feel" and I just throw in whatever I have lying about - but since my kids have become adults and started cooking for themselves, I've realised that not everyone can cook by feel, not everyone can instinctively know what will work in a recipe, and some people prefer a neat and orderly list of what to use. So, here it is :)

Serves 4.

1 can chopped tomatoes
2 cups hot water
1 chicken stock cube
1 sachet chicken & vegetable soup in a cup
2 cups frozen mixed vegetables

Dump the water, chicken stock and chicken soup into a pan and stir it well to make sure there are no lumps in the mix. Stir it over heat until dissolved. Add the other ingredients and simmer until the vegetables are cooked.

Hot tip: to make this go even further, add an extra cup of boiled water and a few tablespoons of tomato ketchup. As you can see, I took the photo before I did this, and my soup was ridiculously thick! :)

Cost (UK - Tesco October 2017)
Tomatoes 31p
Stock cube 5p
Soup sachet 8p
Frozen vegetables 20p

16p per serve
with two slices of buttered bread, about 25p per serve