The story goes, that once, a certain pilgrim friar, arrived at a wealthy farmer's house, where he asked that he be allowed him to cook up his soup, for which he always carried around a stone! A little water is never denied to anyone and so the friar managed to worm his way into the farmer's house and obtain a pot of boiling water wherein he placed his small stone. As Need is indeed the Mother of Invention, he slowly started to insinuate that the soup might taste a tad better if his hosts were so kind as to let him add a little bit of this and a little bit of that, until he landed up with a dish full of aromatic and tasty ingredients, turning, what started off as mere stone soup, into a rich, spicy, nutritious meal. And thus, the friar managed to go a lot further than just satiating his hunger, by giving his taste buds a real feast of flavour with his "sopa de pedra"! After all, in what measure does gastronomy differ from a mere meal? Simple, by that which the friar so ably employed in this story of one of the most well known Portuguese soup delights,
CREATIVITY!

Translator's Note: "sopa de pedra"- stone soup