I DID IT! Chicken Time!!

Well, I did it!! After talking about chicken tortilla soup, I had to do it!

So here is what I did.

We roasted the chicken (a la Alton Brown).

We took everything he had us cut out (minus all the guts, I just could not bring myself to do anything with them at this time - I hope to get over my fear of the innards soon as I know I want to waste as little as possible), plus all the bones (which my husband lovingly took all the meat off for us to eat that night) and the drippings from the pan.

We then added carrot chunks, celery chunks (with leaves), onion chunks (with skin). Then we followed a recipe for Healthy Herbal Chicken Stock which will help us fight off colds and flu this winter season. They call it a tonic. :)

It simmered all night long! Then this morning, I made the condensed cream of chicken soup and used some to make the chicken tortilla soup for lunch and froze the rest of the herbal chicken stock and cream of chicken soup. Which is 8 cups of stock (which honestly is about two soups worth for our family), and about 3 cans worth of the cream of chicken soup.

Which brings me to a question. How do you freeze liquids without using plastic? Everything out there I read said to use freezer bags. I am hoping to move away from those. (Although with the success of using cereal bags around the freezer bags I am really happy and liking the ease of freezer bags, especially for things like frozen veggies.) But with soups I would really like to use something NON-plastic. Can I use canning jars? Anyone with any advice?

Chicken Tortilla Soup

Found a recipe for Six Can Chicken Tortilla Soup from stockpiling. It looks REALLY good and easy to make. We are about 95% vegetarian. But every once in a while when you find a yummo recipe, you just gotta have you some chicken tortilla soup!

I also found a recipe for Homemade Condensed Cream of Chicken Soup. She mentions making a big batch and freezing (LOVE that!).

Now I just need to find out how to make chicken stock/broth. I was watching some show my husband downloaded off the internet. It was a 20/20 like special from the UK. In it, they were showing how the rising prices of groceries were affecting everyone's budget. THen they had a chef come in and EVERYTHING was made from scratch. VERY 1930's! The chicken was made into a broth by using the bones and onion skins. I mean NOTHING was wasted.

I found a recipe on Tamm'ys for Tammy's Chicken Broth. But I do not see quite what I am looking for. Hmmm...

Maybe I will just have to find a 1930's cookbook. Does anyone know how to make this kind of broth/stock?

PVC Greenhouse

I found some online plans for how to build an inexpensive greenhouse.

I am not sure about doing this. I know that in the past when I have researched greenhouses, they actually require a bit more work than just set it up and let it go. There is temperature and air control. We do have a space heater which can be mounted to a wall (even though this greenhouse would have no walls, I wonder if we could build a small wooden one in there?). I think it definitely requires more looking into.

Has anyone built this type of green house (or ANY type of green house?). Any words of wisdom you can share??

Reusing Cereal Bags

Yep, you read correct.

I was reading on The Dollar Stretcher (an EXCELLENT resource btw) about freezing foods and preventing freezer burn. Someone suggested saving used cereal bags and wrapping your food in that. So that it what I am doing for now. I was going to stop buying boxed cereal (simply because of the cost), BUT if I am reusing the bags, it might just be worth the cost (I am able to get our gluten free cereals for about $2 a box at the discount store).

I have LOTS of ziploc freezer bags from stockpiling at a sale, so I am putting the food in those and then putting the ziploc bags in the cereal bags. It seems to be working VERY well! I feel good about it anyways. :)

Cranberry Conserves, Part 2

Part 1

Well, that was a lot of liquid for those cranberries. While they did absorb some liquid, they did not EVEN absorb as much as I was hoping. I blended it all together with honey and it tastes pretty good! However, I was not thinking and put ALL the water in there. So there is no way it can be used as conserves.

Some ideas:

• Freeze into popsicles.
  
• Swirl into homemade vanilla ice cream
• Make into a syrup to pour on top of pancakes

So, any of those will work and I am sure will taste so yummy! I do have some drying rosehips in the front garden, so I will try it with those nest. I think it will be fun for the girls to take baskets and harvest the rosehips and help prepare them for the conserve. Rosehips are supposed to be a god cold and flu preventer, and with winter coming, it would be a GREAT time to try it!

Cranberry Conserves

I found a recipe for rosehip conserves and thought what about cranberries?!?! I have a small amount (about 1 1/2 cups) of freeze dried cranberries that I bought a long time back that the children did NOT like to eat.

The recipe said to pour enough apple juice to cover, plus and inch or two. And some cinnamon sticks and refrigerate. In the morning, the dried rosehips will have absorbed all the liquid, remove the cinnamon sticks, add some honey and eat right away.

Well, I don't have enough apple juice. So I did half apple juice and half sweetened water. I don't think cinnaomon sticks will go well with cranberries, so we will just withhold that. I have put them in the fridge and we will see how they come out tomorrow.