You are currently browsing the daily archive for October 16th, 2007.
Today’s experiment in the realm of feeding oneself good food on an increasingly tiny budget… homemade chicken stock! Conveniently, whole chickens were on sale a few weeks ago at a decent price of $0.59/lb, so I bought a couple. At the end of last week, I cooked one in my slow cooker for dinner, and froze 5 containers of left-over chicken meat to use later in recipes (chicken quesadillas tonight – yum!). My normal next step would be to throw out the chicken carcass, after pulling off any last little bits of meat, fat and skin that Baka might like added to her dinner. Alas for the dear, pouting doggie – I have other plans for the remains of this chicken.
I tossed the chicken bones, with their remaining bits of meat and skin into the stock pot. Had a little laugh at myself for finally getting why its called a “stock” pot and added a bunch of leftover celery and onion bits that would have otherwise been headed for my compost pile. Covered it with water, shook in little salt and pepper, and set the pot to heat. Its been simmering happily for 45 minutes now and smells so good! I’ll let it simmer for three more hours or so, occasionally skimming fat off the top.
In the meantime I’ll share how my loaf of bread turned out. Here its after I gave up waiting for it to rise, no action in 36 hours, just before heading into the oven.
And here it is while cooling
Pretty, smelled absolutely heavenly while cooking, and sadly, largely inedible. Its so dense! Picking it up, it feels like a brick not a loaf of bread. I think I could actually injure someone with it if I used it as a weapon. It has a nice crust, it even has a decent sourdough flavor. The extreme edges are the most edible (but that’s not saying much); if you head even a tiny bit into the loaf, its undercooked and chewy.
This loaf, predictably, was a wash. Not sure even the birds would want to eat this one, though I might offer it and see what the resident cardinals think.
I threw out my remaining starter, washed the jar and am letting it dry now. By the time the chicken stock is done my starter jar ought to be dry enough to give the bread making another go.
