Have you ever stopped to

calculate how much a specific supper costs to make? As I was deboning my chicken for tonight's soup, I realized how cheap of a meal chicken noodle soup is.

Here's how I make it: (I tried taking pictures but the soup looked horrendous!!)

Ingredients:
1-whole fryer chicken
carrots, cut up
celery, cut up
onion, cut up
chicken broth
tarragon
pepper
basil
thyme
bay leaves
egg noodles
(Note: the quantity of ingredients depends on how big your chicken is. Roughly about 2 tsp of each spice {except pepper} and 4-6 cups of broth to start.)

In a crockpot combine all ingredients except the noodles. Cook on high for 5-6 hours, until chicken is falling off the bone. Leaving veggies in the broth, remove chicken and debone. Return chicken to crockpot. Add noodles. Add more chicken broth if needed. Cook, on high, until noodles are tender about an hour to an hour and a half.

Easy peasy! Okay, so deboning the chicken takes a bit but the flavor is well worth it.

We always eat this soup with popovers and honey butter. Delicious!

Here's my cost breakdown:

Chicken: $2.50 (I only used half and froze the other half for another meal. This price might be a little deceptive since I got the chicken on sale at City Market.)
Noodles: $1.50 (or thereabouts. I only used half of a bag.)
Carrots: $1.50 (half of a $3 bag)
Celery: $.09 (one stock was $.99 and I used about 3 pcs.)
Onion: $.10 max. (forgot what a bag costs)
Spices: $ priceless (sorry, couldn't resist)

Total price: Let's just round it up to $7.00. Add the popovers into that and it's max a $10 meal give or take a few bucks. Not bad for a family our size. (I didn't factor in the leftovers. There will be at least enough left to feed half our family for another meal.)