I plan our dinner menu every Sunday. This helps immensely with using all of our groceries and taking some stress out of my work week. My husband is a cattle farmer, so we always have a freezer full of beef. I’m not going to lie, it’s amazing. A lot of our meals are planned around the different cuts of beef we have in the deep freeze. Wednesday night was “Krabby Patties and French Fries.” I got home from work, saw the ground beef on the counter, and just wasn’t feeling it. I didn’t want a Krabby Patty.

The locker that processes our beef packages the ground beef in 1 1/2 lb bags. This usually drives me crazy, but this time it worked out. I set aside 1/2 lb to make two “Krabby Patties” for the little fellas and used the rest for a new recipe.

Natasha’s Zuppa Toscana from Natasha’s Kitchen looked perfect. However, I realized I was missing A LOT of ingredients. I searched through my pantry and found everything I could to make it work. From that came my pantry staples version of Zuppa Toscana!

Basic grocery items I had on hand to make this soup work:

• Ground beef
• Chicken stock
• Various herbs and spices
• Half a bag of sun-dried tomatoes
• Half a container of baby spinach and arugula
• Several 2-week old red potatoes growing sprouts (really on their last leg)
• Heavy cream

Alex said this is one of the best soups he has ever had. It’s super budget friendly and a great way to use up that container of greens you have sitting in your fridge. I hope you try it and enjoy it!