Learn to make your own soup. Chunky soup is nasty.

Research how people struggled in challenging times, their resourcefulness in feeding their families.

Appalachian cooking could make a soup out of a single hamhock (pig's foot) and beans
[link to whatscookingamerica.net (secure)]

In Croatia they would harvest rocks from the ocean and make a 'stone soup' - the rocks contained crustaceans that helped to flavor the soup.

If you want to imagine just how sad cuisine can be and some tips to stretch your dollar/stave off hunger, this is an interesting read and the writer covers several countries and their depressing cuisine:

"The World’s Saddest Cuisines: Latvia
...

Literally the food was intended to be cheap, flavorless, and high in calories so you didn’t starve. Jesus Christ, that’s so depressing. The Wikipedia page for Latvian cuisine includes such sentences as “Latvian food is generally quite fatty, and uses few spices” and “Consumption of ready-made or frozen meals is now common” and “upon finishing dinner, it is Latvian culture to sing a song that translates roughly to ‘all I eat is potatoes, and it makes water stream from my eyes.’” Admittedly, we put that last sentence into that page and they edited it out after like thirty seconds, but still.

...

You’re still not convinced? Okay, let’s do a bit of a mental exercise here. Imagine someone sitting alone in a cramped room, one that’s only big enough to fit a small table and a single chair. Overhead is a flickering light fixture.

Now imagine a 50 year old Latvian man sitting at that table, one hand holding a fork, the other a butter knife. In front of him is a plate of boiled potatoes. “Oh goody,” he says to himself in Latvian. “Potatoes again. What a lovely dinner.” Now touch your cheeks to determine how much you’ve cried since you began reading this sentence.

Latvians eating boiled potatoes every day is even more depressing then a recent Lap-Band surgery recipient driving from the hospital straight to an Old Country Buffet."

[link to affotd.com (secure)]