Stone Soup

The girls have been helping me put together my dinner menu each week and for tonight's meal Anna wanted to make Stone Soup.

They gathered some stones:

Washed their stones:

Chopped the potatoes, carrots and celery (I chopped the garlic & onion):

Held their chopping knives very carefully with both hands:

And helped me put the stones into the pot:

Besides the ingredients listed above, I threw in some lentils, sauteed all those ingredients in olive oil, added chicken broth and cooked the soup until everything was tender. Then I blended it all in the blender and added some cream and broccoli. Mmm mmm mmm! It turned out very good. I think the blender step helps a soup like this be more kid friendly (except for the fact that my girls hate the sound of the blender and Ruthie cried the whole time).

Anna helped mix up biscuits to go with the soup:

Which I finished while sitting in the doorway watching them play:

A dinner of Stone Soup and biscuits! Anna is pretending to eat one of the stones, even though we said they were just for flavoring:

The girls loved their soup, and they loved making it. We read the story of Stone Soup while we ate. Have you ever made Stone Soup as a community meal with each person/family contributing an ingredient? The cookbook we used for this soup comes from one of the preschools in our area that makes it in that way, each kid brings a soup ingredient on the designated day and as a class they make soup out of whatever is brought. Someday you'll have to join us for Stone Soup and bring whatever soup ingredient strikes your fancy. Mushrooms? Noodles? Barley? Kale? The possibilities are endless.