Chicken Stock..ready for soup season!

I had been keeping a couple chicken carcasses in the freezer the last few weeks - any time I do anything with chicken, I'll wrap and save the bones until I've got enough to make a batch of chicken stock. I supplement the bones with chicken hind quarters I buy from the deli counter at the grocery store. After the meat has cooked through, I'll strip it from the bones, keeping the meat and returning the bones to the pot to finish simmering. All-in-all, it's about a three or four hour process, but it's so incredibly worth it.
In the pot I've got my chickens, three heads of garlic chopped cross-wise, three yellow onions chopped into quarters, a handful of carrots and celery stalks, a couple bunches of parsley and thyme from the garden, whole black peppercorns, and kosher salt to bring out the flavor.
I brown my ingredients before covering them with water - it adds a little more flavor to the stock and lends a deep brown color. Homemade for sure! :)

Because I use a large pot designed for canning/jarring to make my stock, I end up with SEVERAL quarts for the freezer. The last time or two I've made it, though, I've taken the added step of simmering the stock after pouring it off of the other ingredients but before packing it up for the freezer. It seems to concentrate the flavor that much more...plus, it ensures I'll actually have room for all of it ;)
And not a minute too soon! After I finished this, I gathered up the leaves from the yard and burned them in my vegetable garden. I had used up everything in it for this year, so was ready to clear and prep it for a new season next year. And wouldn't you know it, only a few hours after the fire died out, we had our first snow of the season!

Barbacoa Beef Update

I haven’t posted anything since the Barbacoa Beef update a while back. In part because I was busy eating this beef with every freaking meal I made – it was delicious!

I used a rump roast instead of a brisket..I also cut back slightly on the amounts of cilantro and cloves called for in the recipe, in part because I wasn't sure I was going to be wild about those flavors, but also because my roast was smaller than called for in the recipe. Otherwise, I followed everything to the ‘T’ and it was moist, delicious, and falling apart tender. I shredded the beef and piled it onto buttered and browned tortillas with refried beans, homemade guacamole, caramelized onions, salsa, and cheese. Great flavor…lots of layers.

On another trip to the grocery store after making my beef, I found a couple other ingredients that I’ll try for next time, so stay tuned! ;)

Productive (FAST) weekend!

In between helping the neighbor roof his house, hauling rock with my parents, and all of the other fun stuff going on, I decided I needed to make 'fall' happen. It's been way too hot lately, and I needed fall weather and fall food. So, on a recent trip to Trader Joe's, I bought a BUNCH of arborio rice, a packet of pancetta, and a little wedge of Parmesan to make risotto. Roasted carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower along with onions, white wine, and homemade chicken stock.
Tastes like fall, AND the cooler weather rolled in almost immediately! :)

Yesterday afternoon was spent at my sister's house in Ankeny. She is expecting a baby girl midway through January and is crafting and decorating enough for twins! :)
She and I had talked about a mural of some kind for the nursery - she found an artsy little tree online and decided that's what she would like for me to do. So, my lady friend and I made the trip to Ankeny, mapped out a tree over most of the wall, and painted it for her while she made little flowers out of felt and pretty fabrics downstairs away from the paint smell. We hung all sorts of embellishments on the wall even after this picture, but this gives you the best view.
Didn't turn out too bad, did it? :)

Did I Mention I had Roommates?

So, in one of my last updates I talked about my new roommates. Since that time, I’ve added two more..dogs.

They have decided that anywhere I go, they go.

Roz seems happy about it.

That’s right, in a matter of a couple weeks my house went from just me – all by my lonesome, doing whatever I wanted – to having a female roommate, a cat, and two yappy little dogs. Animal House.

The dogs are from my parents’ house. The parents took a Spring Break trip to Texas with a couple friends and I figured watching the dogs was the least I could do given that they gave up most of last summer and the better part of a years-worth of weekends to help me put my house back together. So far the dog-watching has been alright.

That’s not to say it hasn’t come without ANY hiccups, though.

Of course, there was the mandatory marking of the territory upon entering a new place. Luckily the wood floors wipe clean easily enough. There’s also the incessant click-clacking of dog claws on the hardwood, which is something to get used to. Watching them run around and slide on the wood floors is kind of funny, though. J

Then there was the matter of the cat. Apparently cats and dogs don’t get along?

I thought this would work well, being the naïve young man I sometimes am. Charlie the cat has lived with a dog before, and Tripp (the darker black dog) has lived with a cat before. Piece of cake, I thought.

Wrong.

Tripp and Charlie detest each other.. It might have something to do with Tripp peeing in Charlie’s food bowl, but I’m not sure.

Roz, our old, deaf dog is just along for the ride. She, very likely, doesn’t know where she is, nor does she seem to care. As long as the Milk Bones keep coming, she’s a happy camper.

Coming home to let the dogs out did cut our St. Patrick’s Day plans a bit short. We walked home only to let them relieve themselves and ended up taking a five hour nap. Oops. J It was fun up to that point though!

Maybe just one more before bed..

And, because I don’t have stunning progress pictures for you just yet, I took a picture of dinner from Monday night. I will call it “Cleaning out the Fridge Risotto” It’s what you make when you want risotto but only have four carrots, a partial bag of spinach, and some Parmesan cheese in the fridge.

"Cleaning out the Fridge Risotto" made a nice big dinner and a couple lunches. Tasty!

It was delicious. But it’s still time for grocery shopping.