At that point I feel justified in bragging a little, because I also have good homemade stocks at home. Many people can't imagine spending precious kitchen time on making soup stock, but homemade stocks are easy to make. They simmer while you pleasantly occupy yourself with some other evening or weekend task. The benefit to having homemade stocks on hand reveals itself in the full-bodied taste of your soups. Stocks can be used in low-fat cooking in so many ways.
Stocks are delicious in low-fat sauces to replace milk or cream.
You can even use them to pre-soak beans for an extra boost of flavor. My freezer is the holding place for stock ingredients. I make two kinds of vegetarian stock every month or so, then keep them frozen in large self-sealing bags. During the weeks in between, I accumulate the ingredients for stock-making from peels and ends of vegetables I've used in other recipes. These vegetable ends go into freezer bags, and when I have four cups I simmer them all in water to make a rich broth, a trick I learned from one of the restaurants where I used to work.