Make broth

I have been converted to broth. Not to buying broth, but boiling bones I got in a roast, freezing the broth, and using it later in soup? Oh Yes! Plus, when I make teriyaki chicken or boil shrimp in flavored water, I save the seasoned juice in freezer cartons. Then I include one or two of the stronger flavored along with the can juice from green beans or garbanzo beans for soup. I used to throw out the pinto bean cooking water, too; not anymore! I use it for soup.

My mother never bought canned broth. She made broth a couple times, but the recipe always called for throwing out the veggies afterwards, and she would rather feed the veggies to her seven children. My father and mother grew as much as they could. She bought only what they couldn't easily produce.

I learned to read recipes from my mother; she taught 4-H cooking back when it started with real cooking from scratch, not this smart shopping/reading ingredient labels. There's nothing wrong with smart shopping, nor with reading ingredient labels, but I learned to take flour and water and actually make food out of it.

My mother and I had this in common: we had to feed a lot of people with a little money. She and I both limited what we would buy. Grocery stores expanded exponentially during my lifetime. I continued to limit my purchases, not just for money but because deciding what to buy started overwhelming me. It's so much simpler to go into Walmart and ignore 90 percent of what's there, because it isn't on the list.

I can hear my children saying, "But Mom, you buy stuff off list all the time!" Yes, I do. But that's because I have a mental list of everything we have at home. It's my domain, my castle, my inventory.

I can make broth at home, by adding the seasonings I already own to the meat I just bought. There's no need to buy broth, at all.