Leftover Lunch - Taco Soup

Today's Leftover Lunch is one of my favorite and a standard in our home.  Living in Texas means lots of Mexican or Tex-Mex food.  Chili is big.

There are several ways to make "leftover lunch" really work for your family.

What I have done for years is to use a 3 cup plastic container and just add the leftover ingredients until the bowl is full.  Keep in the freezer.  Because food in a plastic bowl in the freezer will not come out easily, I normally rinse off the bowl and then invert into whatever pan or crockpot I'm using and pour 1 cup very hot water of it.  The water will become part of the stock.  Keep sandwich size zip bags of corn chips in the freezer, too.

In my pot today are the leftover parts of:

chili
black beans
corn
hamburger patty
ground sausage
pinto beans
chopped onion, bell pepper and tomato

My bowl of ingredients were not frozen, so this is how I started.  If you start with frozen ingredients, skip the sautee part.

In a 3 qt saucepan, sautee 1/2 chopped onion / bell pepper in 2 Tab oil.

Lower heat and add the leftover ingredients and 2 to 3 cups water.  If you do not have tomato, you can add pico, salsa or even 1/2 cup ketchup.  Simmer on medium for 30 minutes.  If cooking in a crockpot, turn on low for about 3 hours.

When the mixture has cooked together, reduce heat and add 1 cup crushed corn chips (the ones at the bottom of the bag).  Allow the mixture to simmer until the corn chips dissolve and become part of the broth.