Friday, January 9, 2009

Not so Frugal Dinner!

In an effort to keep things real...

Tonight for dinner I decided to make up some of my Chicken Veggie Stew to use up the cooked chopped up chicken that I had done earlier in the week.

So I am making up the soup and doubling the recipe(almost tripling) as I go along because I thought it would be great to have for leftovers next week when we are to get bitter cold temperatures and windchills.  

I put the spices in the pot and noticed that the broth of the soup seemed to change color instead of being golden yellow it was more of a burnt yellow. In other words, it appeared to have too much pepper or poultry seasoning in it!  I thought that it was just because it needed to simmer and all the spices had floated to the top of the soup pot.  I could not add more water or broth to the pot without draining some of the broth that was already in the pot!  BUT in my stubbornness, I thought that it was my imagination and with it being such a big pot of soup(we are talking a 12 qt. stockpot!)

We sat down to eat our dinner---soup and homemade bread and on the first bite I knew that it was not my imagination on the spice! And my fears were confirmed when one at time each of my children and my hubby chimed in with "boy this is hot, spicy hot!"

Despite the soup's spicy hotness, every one ate it, however, I felt like any of the leftovers were going to be wasted if I did not take the time to fix my mistake!

To fix my mistake, I drained basically all the broth off the soup and down the drain it went!  The broth that consisted of 2 cans of chicken broth and 2 cans of cream of chicken soup.  To put broth back into the soup, I ended up using another can of chicken broth, about 2 cups of water with bouillon, and milk and flour. You are probably wondering why I didn't just use more cans of broth and cream of chicken soup. Well the other cans that I have in my pantry are marked for other meals!  So I tried to fix my mistake in a more frugal way. 

So what I thought would turn out into a frugal dinner ended up costing more in the long run because of my mistake of too much spice. 

The hard lesson in this situation is add a little bit of spice at a time even if you are doubling or tripling a recipe!  It will save you a major headache in the long run. 

Oh just so you know...for the 12 qt. stockpot I put in a measured 1 tsp black pepper and a scant 1 tsp poultry seasoning. I forgot that poultry seasoning has pepper in it!!    

For actual frugal ideas, head over to Biblical Womanhood!

4 comments:

Martha A. said...

That is a good thing to remember! Sometimes in soup that i I have added too muc spice or something i find that a spoon of sour cream or some cheese will cut it!

Mom2fur said...

Oh, well, live and learn! I've heard that throwing a raw potato in broth with too much salt helps. Maybe it would help with something like this, too!
Now, in my house, nothing is spicey enough for my husband and kids. They probably would have loved this.

Jennifer said...

I have made mistakes too in cooking. Except the most recent was potato soup and I forgot to put any seasonings in it. It was very, very bland and no one liked it. But we ate it too. Good for you, not throwing it out!

Unknown said...

I have done the same with my mashed potatoes. I misread the recipe and put in too much salt for the amount of potatoes I had cooked. It took another bag of potatoes mixed in with the first batch to make it taste acceptable. Thanks for sharing!