DIY Chicken Stock

Soup weather is upon us! There may not be much better than a warm bowl of soup on a cold, winter day. All of my favorites start with a chicken broth/stock base (Sausage and Sweet Potato Soup and Buffalo Chicken Chili). If you make a lot of soups, you will probably be going to the grocery store to buy the ingredients- especially veggies and broth/stock. (NOTE- Broth is made from meat and stock is made from bones. I usually use stock for everything, even if it calls for broth.) Why not skip the expensive chicken stock purchase and use the scraps of your veggies to make your own chicken stock? Besides saving money, you actually know what is in your stock AND you can control the sodium.

It is souper super easy to make your own chicken stock. When I'm eating healthy (which will be now more than ever), I usually buy one or two of those rotisserie chickens that the grocery store has cooked on Sunday. I pick all the meat off the bones and set aside for salads, wraps, snacks, etc. Then I take the rest of the carcass and put it into a gallon sized ziplock baggie and put it in the freezer. I will usually make chicken stock once I have three or four carcasses saved up.

Besides the meat bones, you will need veggies, herbs, and spices. Whenever I'm cooking, I take all my scrap pieces of the veggies- bottoms and the skin peelings of carrots, leafy parts of celery, tops of peppers, papery skins of onions and garlic- and throw those in a gallon sized ziplock baggie. If I buy a whole onion but the recipe only calls for half, I chop up the remaining half in large pieces and into the baggie it goes. Do you have old frozen veggies that have developed freezer burn? Throw those into the baggie. Have fresh herbs or produce that needs to be used before they go bad? Into the baggie! I even throw pulp from juicing carrots and celery into the baggie. Keep these bags of scraps in your freezer until you have two full gallon bags. I've read to steer clear of freezing starchy veggie scraps like potatoes because they will make your stock cloudy. You can do a quick internet search to find out what types of veggies to NOT use when making broth....

A bunch of veggie scraps waiting to be frozen.

Freezer burned veggies? Perfect for making chicken stock!

Once you have a gallon baggie of bones (3-4 chickens) and two baggies of veggie scraps, it's STOCK MAKING DAY! Get the biggest pot you have. I use my 12 quart stock pot for this. Mine has a giant colander in it, which helps when it's time to strain all your bones and veggies out of the stock. Start by throwing in the chicken bones.

This is only one chicken. I knew I was going to the grocery store after I got the stock going. I added the other two carcasses after I got back.

Then throw in your veggies. Add enough water to cover everything!

I ended up only using two bags of scraps this time. The other went back into the freezer for next time!

I then throw in a handful of peppercorns and a handful of salt. ***If you don't add salt now, don't forget to add it later when using the stock for soup recipes. I went through a whole meal trying to figure out why my soup didn't taste like it normally did before I remembered the salt!***

I added about this much salt as well.

Have a few bay leaves? Throw them in! I didn't have any for this batch. The last item you need is 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar. Chicken bones (or bones in general) have a lot of beneficial minerals stored up in them. These are what help you feel better when you are sick and eat chicken noodle soup. The vinegar helps to leech the minerals out of the bones. Trust me....you won't taste the vinegar once the stock is made.

So once all your ingredients are in the pot, heat on high until it just starts to boil and then kick the heat all the way down to the lowest setting you have. Cover the pot and let this cook anywhere from 12-24 hours. From what I've read, you need to let it go at least 12 hours to infuse the flavor, but once you go longer than 24 hours, you start getting funky tastes. When I make stock, I let it go for 12 hours. 

After you've finished cooking your stock, let cool for awhile (I usually wait 30 minutes to an hour) and then strain all the solids from your stock (here's where that colander insert is handy). If you don't get all the little bits out at this point, that's ok. Put the stock in the fridge and let cool over night. 

The next morning, you'll find that all of the fat has congealed at the top of the stock.

Yummy.... 

Skim off the biggest globs of fat and then pour the stock through a cheese cloth to catch the rest (and to catch the little bits that you didn't get out the night before). At this point you can reheat your stock and then can it using a pressure canner. If you don't have all of that equipment, it freezes beautifully!

Use this method to make turkey stock after the holidays (you'll probably only need one turkey carcass)! It'll smell like Thanksgiving every time you open a new jar! Are you a vegetarian? Save your veggie scraps, omit the meat and vinegar, and simmer for 5-6 hours instead!

Reinventing Myself

I've always heard that you should never set New Years' Resolutions because more often than not, you will fail. Maybe that's because many people keep their resolutions to themselves. My thinking behind this post is that if I throw my goals out there into the interwebz, somebody can help keep me accountable. I have no idea who actually reads this, as I don't get much feedback. I do know that from time to time I'll get comments from friends on Facebook. I do know that others read this too...at the time that I'm writing this, my 32 posts have over 2,500 page views coming from all over the world. Hopefully this post will inspire someone to take this journey with me.

This year, I'm planning on reinventing myself. Probably not a terribly original resolution. I want to make my home and life less stressful (which, if you know me, I don't stress much....but right now home and life is adding grey hairs). I also want to work on my physical appearance (again....how original). Lastly, I want to work on inner self. I am not adding in spiritually, because my family has already begun working on this in the last few months. Plus, I haven't really looked into that aspect on Pinterest. Considering that's the whole concept behind my blog, I'll address the items that I can help conquer via Pinterest.

First I want to start with making my home and life less stressful. To me, that means keeping the house cleaner and decluttered. For the past couple of years, I've been a stay at home mom. I have all the time in the world to keep up with the housework, cooking, and cleaning. But I don't. The house looks like the Wood-Man and I work full time. I stumbled across a pretty feasible housecleaning and laundry schedule that works for me now, when I have all the time in the world, and that will work for me when I do start working again (anyone out there hiring???). However, for whatever reason, I didn't pin it. At the time I came across it, our printer wasn't working so I copied the cleaning chart by hand, stuck it on the fridge, and got to work. Each day's cleaning takes about 15 minutes (weekdays only!), and includes one load of laundry. I always dread cleaning and laundry day because it lasts all darn day. Usually by the end of it, I have stacks of clean clothes around the house that we never put away, which then adds to the clutter situation. BUT....I can handle putting away one load of clothes a day, and cleaning for 15 minutes! Here is my copy. If you know where this came from, let me know and I'll give credit. Also, I'm not super blog savvy so if you want a copy of this to alter for yourself, give me your email address in a comment and I'll send it to you.

Another new project the Woodman and I are tackling is a year-long declutter program. The best part of this program is that it gives you daily tasks in a calendar format that should only take about 15 minutes a day.

I first came across this calendar on a friend's Facebook page, but have also seen it on Pinterest. It comes from the Home Storage Solutions 101 website. This link takes you to a printable version of the January calendar (to get the rest of the year, you just have to subscribe to her email list). As seen in the picture above, most tasks have a link to further explain each task and/or offer suggestions.  Wood-Man and I easily completed today's task in about 3 minutes!

Task 1: Set up a donation and selling collection station

For the physical appearance, obviously I want to eat better and lose weight. We are going to start cutting out processed foods. I came across this 14 week program that slowly eases you in to clean eating.

A friend shared a blog post recently that also talked about losing weight. It basically said that most people focus on the outcome of pounds or inches lost. The author points out that its much easier to instead of focusing on an outcome, focus on the process of getting there. She listed three numbers. The first number was her pants size. The second was weight. The third was the amount of miles she ran in the past year. I'm going to take this approach. With the hope of focusing on the healthier eating and the increasing of mileage (mine will be walking instead of running), my first two numbers will shrink. 

So, I've sat here for about 10 minutes contemplating on actually listing my numbers. I physically feel sick to my stomach throwing out there what they are. If you know me, you know that I'm very overweight. I think for the moment, I'm just going to say that my mileage goal is 180 miles for the year. At the end of the year, I'll revisit this post and will post what my numbers were on Jan. 1, 2015 and what they ended up being on Dec. 31, 2015. You can hold me to that. 

Lastly, in order to improve my inner self, I am going to start a gratitude jar for our family. During the last half of the year, we have been really swamped with dealing with my broken ankle and the subsequent medical bills. For me, it has been a bit depressing and I'm struggling to remember the good stuff that happened (which I know we had a lot of good things occur). At this moment, when I think about 2014, my thoughts are, "Damn, that year sucked." Anyway, this jar will sit in the kitchen and as something good happens, we will jot down what it was and drop it in the jar. It can be something funny, something unexpected, something really awesome - basically anything good. On December 31, 2015, we can all sit down and read the slips of paper.