A long time ago there was an old traveler who was very tired and hungry. Soon he saw a small hut in the jungle. He was glad that now he could get shelter and some food to eat. He knocked at the door full of hope. An old woman opened the door. He asked her if he could spend the night there and get some food. The unkind old woman just said no and that she herself needed the food, and closed the door. The man was disappointed but thought that he should try one more time. He knocked at the door again and asked this time if he could only get shelter. The woman said no again.

The man tried again – for the third time – and asked the woman for shelter in return for some magic soup.  The woman was now confused. She asked – “You were asking for food a couple of minutes ago, now how can you provide me the soup. Do you have it”? The witty old man said that he had a magical stone that could make delicious soup, and that he will share the soup with her if she allowed him to spend the night in her hut. The greedy woman was very curious about the “magical stone” and promptly agreed.

Now the old man was a clever man, he had realized that the woman was not as poor as she was pretending to be. So he took some stones and started boiling them in a pot of water. Stirring the soup he asked the woman if she had half a cup of wheat flour. The curious woman ran to her kitchen and brought him back a full cup of flour. After a few minutes the clever man asked for some garlic, potato and tomatoes just to flavor the soup. The woman  happily got all of that without realizing that the she was in fact providing all the ingredients for the soup.

The soup was boiling now and started to smell good. The man said aloud if there were some pieces of chicken in the hut which could make the soup amazingly good. The woman eagerly got him the pieces and they added them to the pot.

Minutes after the man poured for the woman some delicious soup. The woman couldn’t stop praising how good the stone soup was. And the man kept smiling :).