Almost-free Chicken Soup

1-2 lemons
rice
vegetables
pepper
butter
garlic
onion
roast chicken carcass

Toss the roast chicken carcass in a pot with some water and simmer until what meat's left falls off the bones. Pull everything out of the pot with a slotted spoon and remove all the bones and gristle. Discard the bones and gristle, and put what you kept back into the pot of stock. Add whatever vegetables are on hand, and simmer with a lid on. Zest and juice the lemons, adding both to the pot. Add 1/2 to 1 cup of rice, depending on how much rice you like in your soup. Add as much or as little pepper as you like. Saute thinly-sliced garlic and onion in the butter and add that to the soup pot. When the rice is cooked and you're hungry, it's ready to eat.

I made this on Sunday, because one of the guys in my Saturday gaming group brought a couple of rotisserie chickens to share that he got free at work (he works at a market). I already had four carrots, half an onion, some garlic and the rice on hand, plus two lemons—one from the free shelf at work, the other I found on the sidewalk the day before; it was still good, so I took it home. I went to the store and bought a leafy bunch of celery, so all in all this soup, which I just finished today for lunch, cost me 79 cents. And I only used half of the celery in the soup. So call it three days' worth of meals for 40 cents. W00t!