Guest Author - Linda J. Paul

When my children were little and we didn’t have a whole lot of money, which happened quite a bit with six of them, we came up with creative ideas to stretch the food budget. So, we wound up eating meals like spaghetti, soup or stew quite often. I love vegetable soup, or any kind of soup for that matter, but getting the little ones to eat it was not always an easy task. Until we started making Stone Soup.

I actually got the idea from a children’s book that my mother had read to me as a child. Basically it told the story of a mother who made a delicious soup from a stone! One day as my youngest wandered into the kitchen tossing a small stone from hand to hand, the story came to mind.

“Hey Kenny, can I borrow that stone for tonight’s soup?”

My surprised six year old looked at the stone and back at me as if I had lost my mind. “You can’t make soup out of a stone,” he said, “Can you?”

We washed the stone and put into a big pot of boiling water. I stirred it for a bit and said, “You know this soup looks good but maybe we should add a couple of carrots to give it color.”

Intrigued, Kenny got out the carrots and the potatoes, as I added a few spices. We spent the afternoon preparing the Stone Soup for our dinner.

When the rest of the brothers and sisters arrived and asked what we were having for dinner, Kenny proudly informed them that he had cooked a whole kettle of soup with just a stone. After that night, we made Stone Soup once a week with each child contributing a different stone. I still have those stones in a jar above my stove. I look at them and remember the joyous noise of a houseful of children.

Here is my favorite recipe for Stone Soup:

1 medium sized stone of any shape washed well
1-2 lbs of diced stew beef
8 carrots
10 potatoes
2 cubes of beef bouillon
2 small onions diced
1 small clove of garlic
¼ tsp of basil, sage, and marjoram
Salt and pepper to taste

Add the stone to a large kettle of water. Allow it to come to a boil as you are dicing the meat and onion and garlic. Add a few drops of olive or vegetable oil to the bottom of a skillet and pan fry the meat, onion and garlic until the meat is no longer red. Drain off excess fat from the mixture and add to the boiling water. Bring the heat down to a simmer and add the bouillon cubes and herbs. Let the stock simmer for half and hour to an hour and then add the carrots. When the carrots are almost soft add the potatoes. Let the soup simmer for as long as you wish. It gets better the longer it cooks. Add salt and pepper to taste before serving. Serve hot with buttered bread.

Personally, I find that rounder stones have a more robust, hearty flavor.

Love and Light..


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