What did you do today?

I had quite a lazy day... it started with about 2 hours on the couch. Breakfast. Coffee. Blogs. Today Show. It was pretty nice. But I was actually being more productive than it looked, as the kitchen was filling with the aromatic smell of homemade chicken stock. It was simmering away on the stove top, and had only taken about 3 minutes to get started.

The inspiration came from The Sweet Beet, a blog my sister introduced me to. The first post I read was about boiling your garbage, and while I thought her advice was a little extreme (egg shells! apple cores! GROSS!), I liked the idea of saving my veggie scraps in the freezer. It seems silly to me to buy fresh carrots, celery, and onions just so that I can boil them to death. So I tried to remember to save scraps, plus wilted veggies I didn't cook in time... and today I tossed the bag of frozen bits into a big stock pot, with a frozen chicken carcass left over from a roast chicken last week. I filled the pot with water, placed it on the stove, and went to enjoy my bagel* while it came to a boil. Seriously, so little effort. The biggest challenge was remembering it was in the kitchen, and to check it and turn down to a simmer once it started boiling. Otherwise, I just tossed in some peppercorns, and let it simmer for a couple hours. I guess straining and putting into containers took a bit more work, but at that point I was more awake and willing to put forth the effort! The result: about 18 cups of homemade chicken stock, now patiently waiting in my freezer.



*While on the subject of breakfast... Aren't bagels the best thing ever? I think my dad's New York roots get credit for my addiction, and it takes every ounce of my health-conscious eating mentality to not eat a bagel every morning. Salt bagels are my all time favorite, but since they're pretty hard to find outside of NYC, my usual go-to is the everything variety. Delicious!