A friend once approached me with this question: "Look, I have 2 kg (that's 5 pounds) of tomatoes. I don't know what to do with them. I want to make some soup, and I don't know how."

You know, you can usually make soup out of anything you got in the fridge and in the kitchen.

You don't need exactly 5 pounds of tomatoes, either. Any smaller amount will do. And anything more - just make sure it fits in the pot and leaves room for the rest of your soup. Use common sense, okay? :)

Warning: it isn't a vegetarian recipe, or a diet one, or a fool-proof one. As the saying goes, the minute you make something fool-proof, they make a better fool.

First of all, you have to decide if you want their skins floating around in your soup or not.

If you're OK with tomato skins, just let them float around. Although I warn you - they are usually harder to chew than the rest of the soup, and that might make them quite undesirable.

So better get rid of the skins - just peel them off.

Then cut the tomatoes into bite sized bits.

Yes, that's right. Told you this wasn't a diet recipe.

Best thing for carbohydrates for soup is, of course, potatoes. Or macaroni. Or both.

If you cut up potatoes into tiny 5mm pieces, they boil to perfection in just 9 minutes. If it's bite-sized pieces, they usually take about 20 minutes.

No potatoes or macaroni? Look for spaghetti. Anything of that kind.

Got none of those? Maybe there's some rice in your kitchen? Umm... Any other grains should do nicely, as well.

At worst, add some bread. Yes! They did used to make bread soup in some folk recipes. So you do it too.

Carbohydrates are essencial for soup.

I'm not a vegetarian. If I were, I'd have no idea how to make any soup, let alone this fun tomatoe soup with "anything you got".

So, meat. Got no meat? Not even hamburger? Maybe some sausages? Chicken? Fish?! Maybe there's seafood?

I knew you could find something after all.

Oh, you didn't? Ummm.... Some buillion cubes could do okay.

No, seriously. You need meat for your soup. And I wasn't kidding when I mentioned sausages. That's what my friend used.

Got meat? Cut it up into little pieces. Half-bite-size is preferable, or smaller.

Well, they're optional, as you've already got tomatoes. But soup is tastier the more veggies you add. So look around the kitchen once again.

If you have and want vegetables, get them ready for soup. Wash them, cut them up. The maximum size is bite size, but cut them into smaller pieces if you want them to cook faster.

Carrots take especially long time to cook (longer than potatoes), so I suggest you grate them. You could even pre-cook them in a pan with a bit of olive oil - that does wonders to their taste, too.

Wait. Cook the meat first, with some salt. You should know the approximate amount of salt that goes in your pot of water. If you don't, add just a little bit. You can always add more later.

When the meat is not red anymore (if it was to begin with), get all the other ingredients in.

If you're using macaroni or spaghetti or anything of that kind, look at their cooking time on the package. Add them into the soup when you estimate the soup's almost done - the amount of minutes of cooking left should match the one on the macaroni package. If it doesn't, don't worry. Overcooked pasta in soup never hurt anyone.

Unless you got something tricky, like some vegetable I don't even know exists, they should all take around the same time to cook.

20 minutes perhaps.

15 minutes into the cooking is about the right time for the first tasting.

Do it safely - I'm not responsible if you kill or maim yourself at this point.

Just get a big spoon or similar, get some soup out, cool it off a bit, and taste it. It's quite a fool-proof method, you know...

Don't worry if the soup is a bit bland - I didn't tell you to put in any seasonings yet, so you didn't, right?

Just taste all the ingredients and make sure they're already edible, that is, cooked well.

Add whatever seasonings you want, or like, or have. Add them sparingly. Taste again.

Because it's easy to add more, but almost impossible to get out again, if there's too much.

Lots of tastings should do the trick.

While you do this stage, the estimated finishing time should roll around. Just make sure everything in the pot is cooked well enough, and the taste is to your liking.

If it isn't, and no amount of seasonings seems to do the trick, restart with different ingredients. At least you have some valuable experience now.

Good luck!