Tasty Tuesday

...Albondigas Soup

This is Mexican Meatball Soup. We had it for dinner last night with small taco salads. Tonight we will finish the soup served in mugs alongside our chicken breast sub sandwiches.
Tonight will be the last in the string or thread of leftovers I last posted.
Almost all of the ingredients  I used to make this soup were either leftovers from previous meals this week or from our garden and put up in our freezer.

This recipe lends itself to many options. Different recipes on line use either beef, pork or turkey to make the meatballs and different vegetables too.
Plenty of room for creativity here!
Here's what I did:

• Thawed: leftover tortilla stacks from earlier in the week, ground turkey, broccoli  tomatoes, homemade salsa.
• Literally I dumped it all in my crockpot. I didn't  need any extra seasoning because of the salsa and leftover Mexican tortilla stack (which had, salsa, cheese, black beans, onions, black olives, corn tortillas, and cilantro in it).
• When we had chicken the other night I put in four extra potatoes to bake and saved them for putting in the soup yesterday.
• I emptied the last of our carrots in the soup.
• I molded the thawed turkey burger into meatballs and because I was in a hurry last night I did not add anything else to the meatballs---just turkey, not even seasoning. I felt the other ingredients would be enough to flavor the soup.
• When they were cooked thoroughly I added them to the bubbling soup in the crockpot.
• I de-glazed the pan the meatballs were cooked in and added that liquid to the soup. 
• I fried the last of the corn tortillas and filled them with our dinner salads, added a little of my homemade balsamic/olive oil dressing and a tiny bit of salsa and some chopped avocado.
   I added a crumble of cheese and some tortilla chips on top of each soup bowl.

This is super easy---and of course you can make it from scratch but I think it is much more fun and economical to use leftovers---planned---to put in the soup.

Tonight we will have the last of the soup in mugs alongside chicken (leftover) and veggie subs.Very quick meal tonight which is good because I am leaving now for town!

Be creative and put whatever you like in your soup. 

There are also many recipes online.

Enjoy!

Kathi~