The title of a syndicated newspaper comic strip by Jan Eliot, started in November 1995. The name is derived from the aforementioned tale where a community has to create something from nothing, which is "what parents, especially single parents, often must do."

The cast of Stone Soup is sort of the opposite of "Fox Trot": two single moms, both sisters; Valerie is a widow with two daughters, pre-teenage and grade school-age, and Joan has a boy toddler and an ex-husband who still hasn't taken responsibility for anything. Their mom lives upstairs in Valerie's house. Val's dating a local motorcycle cop. Their middle-aged neighbor Wally just got married to Joan. He has custody of his teenage nephew, who's only now getting his act together. Oh, and Val has a dog named Biscuit, who's really more like a little lightning bolt with a tongue.

If there's any other possible non-traditional way for heterosexual human beings to form a family, it's probably showed up in this strip at one time or another. It's an uncommon dose of reality in the daily funny pages. Right down to the office jerks.