You Can Eat Well on a Budget

You don't have to be a witch, but it helps

Let’s be honest: This is my idea of showing off. You can make this soup on the stove and it’ll be perfectly fine. But if you have the means to make it outside, it’s lots of fun. (Photo by Michelle Teheux)

It’s nearly Halloween, so the idea of making witch-style soup appealed to me.

Through the ages, older single women were often derided as witches — having a husband is likely the only thing that has kept the neighbors from turning me in. I think a lot of poor older single women would have been bound to make the thriftiest dish of them all — soup — and that’s why you always saw them stirring cauldrons. But they were probably boiling beans, not eye of newt.

I haven’t tracked the cost of newts’ eyes, but grocery prices in general have increased 25 percent from 2019 to 2023, according to the Consumer Price Index. So witch or not, you may be open to cutting your grocery bill whenever you can.

Recently, I made a witchy dinner that was inexpensive, easy, nutritious and delicious. No newts needed.

It’s more or less minestrone

But because I fear some Italian grandmother will take me to task for inauthenticity, I’m going to call it Patio Soup.

Why Patio Soup?

If you’ve been reading my stuff, you know I’m all agog about having a viral Medium story that made $20K, a much-needed boost to this writer’s lean finances. We saved most of it, but we used part of the proceeds to purchase patio pavers.

Once we (well, my husband) laid the new patio, we first placed a seasonal pool on it. When the weather turned, we swapped the pool for a fire pit.

Some friends were coming over last weekend, and it occurred to me I should make soup on the patio. I wanted something hearty, but my husband is a vegetarian, so this is what I came up with. 

You can make this in a cast iron pot over your fire pit in your backyard if you want to go all out, but you can also just make it on your stove.

Patio Soup

Gather: 

Olive oil

One large onion

Two carrots

Two stalks celery

Two large potatoes 

One carton vegetable broth (or chicken broth, or just water)

Four cloves of garlic 

About a cup of pastina or other small pasta

2 cans diced tomatoes (or ripe chopped tomatoes if you have them)

1 can cannellini beans

Lots of fresh chopped thyme, oregano, basil, parsley and rosemary, to taste

Salt and pepper to taste

Parmesan cheese to grate over the top, if desired

Sauté in olive oil:

One large chopped yellow onion

2 ribs of celery, chopped

Three carrots, sliced or diced

Keep stirring the vegetables around until the onions have softened, then add about four cloves of pressed garlic. Stir for a few more minutes.

Add one carton vegetable broth. Let the vegetables boil for a few minutes and get close to tender because you do not want hard potatoes or carrots. When you judge the vegetables are close to being done, stir in your pasta. I used about a cup of pastina, but orzo or alphabets or in a pinch even elbow macaroni will work fine.  

Next, stir in the beans and tomatoes and then add finely chopped fresh herbs, salt and pepper. If it’s thickened too much, add more broth or just water. You could also use tomato juice if you like.

If you must, add in dried Italian seasoning instead of fresh herbs. But I grow my own herbs and in the winter I bring some of them inside so I always have fresh stuff available. This doubles as a home decor tip; pots of fresh herbs give your kitchen that je ne sais quoi, which I am allowed to say without sounding pretentious because my husband is European.

This made a good-sized pot of hearty soup. I served it with sourdough bread I’d just pulled from the oven, but you could serve garlic bread or nothing. You can grate some Parmesan over the top but you don’t have to. It’s complete as it is. 

How much did it cost?

This soup is very flexible. You can add more or less of any ingredient or substitute at will. I’m using the prices I found online at my local Aldi and Kroger; I likely paid a bit less because I didn’t go through the app.

The guests provided the bottle of wine!

Shopping list:

2 pounds of carrots: $1.55 (I probably used about a quarter of the package, so let’s say 40 cents) 

Bag of yellow onions: $2.99 (Guessing the one big onion I used ran about 60 cents)

2 large red potatoes: 5 lb. bag $4.39 (Another guess: Maybe a dollar?)

1 carton of vegetable broth: $1.65

Garlic: 3-count $1.75 (Let’s say 30 cents)

Pastina: $2.30 for 2 ounces ($1.15)

Canned diced tomatoes: $1.05 (so $2.10)

Can of cannellini beans: .95

Stalk of celery: $1.99 for one pound (Maybe 50 cents?)

Olive oil: 16.9 ounces at $7.25 (Don’t make me try to figure out how much a couple of tablespoons would cost. Let’s just call it 10 cents.)

Lots of chopped thyme, oregano, basil, parsley and rosemary, to taste (Free)

Grand total cost?

My best guess is this pot of Patio Soup cost me $8.75 – probably a bit less because I estimated everything high. It would have been even less if I’d had enough ripe tomatoes on the vine, but I didn’t.

It would have been easy to double the quantities, if I were making it in a big stock pot indoors. I was limited by the size of my iron kettle. 

Had the four of us gone out to dinner, we’d have paid much more and our meals likely would not have tasted nearly as good as this soup (and bread, but that’s another subject) did. 

I like to make huge quantities of soup in winter and serve the soup for two or three days. Although it takes some time to make the soup, I then have ready-made meals for days that require only reheating. As long as you don’t repeat the same type of soup too often, usually everyone is happy for soup leftovers because most soups are better the next day. 

Lentil soup is up next on my menu. I hope it lasts more than two days, but I wouldn’t bet on it. 

About Michelle Teheux

I’m a writer in central Illinois. If you like my work, subscribe to me here and on Medium. My new book is The Trailer Park Rules.