Hulme Life – Cheap & easy vegetable broth

Love to eat pasta and rice, but hate the fat and calories? Here's a quick, cheap, easy and green way to make pasta, rice, soups, stews, etc. more healthy. Here's how: After thoroughly washing your vegetables, save all the skins, parings, peels, scrapings (in other words, garbage), such as:

• Broccoli and cauliflower stems
• Carrot and parsnip tops and peels
• Potato skins (both white and sweet)
• Onion tops and skins
• Garlic skins
• Pepper cores
• Tomato ends
• Cabbage and lettuce leaves
• Celery stems
• Squash or pumpkin peelings (no seeds, though)
• Cucumber and zucchini peels

This cheap and easy broth is an quick way to get more vegetables each day, plus a great way to go green!

You get the idea. Again, be sure to wash the vegetables thoroughly before peeling as you don't want dirt added to your broth. Collect all these odds and ends in a large plastic freezer bag and keep them in the sealed bag in the refrigerator. When the bag is full, or the contents are in danger of rotting, dump them all into a large soup pot. Add enough water to cover, and add a few whole peppercorns for flavor. You may also want to add a dash or two of tumeric, which is full of health benefits (check it out at http://www.healthdiaries.com/eatthis/20-health-benefits-of-turmeric.html). Put a lid on the pot, and let the mixture boil for about 10 minutes, then let it simmer on low for anywhere from 30 mintues to an hour.

Allow it to cool completely, then strain the "used" vegetable renderings out. If you have a compost heap, throw these right into it to help add nutrients to the soil. Read more about compost heaps at http://hubpages.com/hub/Make-Compost-For-Your-Vegetable-Garden.

Pour the vegetable broth (depending on what types of vegetables were added, and whether or not you added tumeric, it should be a nice "tea" color) into clean jars. Put the jar lids on tightly, label them and keep in the refrigerator. Since there are no preservatives in it, use within 1-3 weeks. Another great benefit to making your own broth is that there is no sodium!

Now comes the fun part; using the broth. Instead of boiling your pasta or rice in plain water, use the vegetable broth instead of water. Although wholegrain pasta and brown rice are a healthier choice, even plain white pasta and rice benefit from all vegetable nutrients in the broth. (By the way, the vegetable flavor is hard to detect; vegetable-haters need not know what's in the water!)

If you are making spaghetti sauce, stew, soup, stir-fry, etc., and need liquid, simply add the "used" broth from the pasta or rice or just add fresh broth. If you need a quick pick-me-up on a cold day, heat up a cup of the vegetable broth and enjoy with crackers.

This cheap and easy broth is an quick way to get more vegetables each day, plus a great way to go green!

http://www.examiner.com/cheap-eats-in-manchester/cheap-easy-vegetable-broth

Hulmelife Manchester