Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Roasted Whole Chicken and Chicken Stock

I am fortunate to have been given a wonderfully yummy, grass-fed, basically organic, home-grown whole chicken from our egg lady and boy was it good.  I have to admit I have never cooked one before and it was a little intimidating, but lucky for me it was already cleaned and ready for cookin'.  After roasting and eating for our Sunday dinner, I took some of the scraps (kept the rest for future use) and boiled it into homemade chicken stock.  It was both a little scary (because of inexperience) and totally thrilling and a huge sense of accomplishment.  I am brimming with pride over such an easy task.  I ran into a nice woman today at the grocery store who was impressed to know I make such things at home and mentioned how sad it is that many do not even know they can do such things.  I agreed that it IS SAD and hw I would love to inform the world, so as to get the word out I want everyone to encourage your friends and others to read my blog and links to my blog roll so that we can together change the world one blog at a time :) Ok! that sounds a little crazy! But truthfully feel free to share your knowledge or others. Thanks for reading. Ok Ok here it is! The beautiful bird ( I realized mid eating I didn't take a pic of it first AHHHH! ) So here it is partially eaten.

Like I said it was soooo good! It's gonna be hard buying store chickens after this spoiling.  But I then took the bones and drippings and left overs from the pieces we ate and boiled them down and then strained to make a lovely gallon of chicken stock for free- at home- delicious!!!  I then bagged each in a freezer Ziploc and laid it flat to freeze and know it will be easy to store in the freezer. Awesome! 


Saturday, March 3, 2012

greens Anyone????


At our house you can usually walk in at any given time and see what looks like grass growing on shelves in the kitchen.  It looks beautiful and tastes well...........like grass! I wanted to tell about another one of my secerets to health.  I have both a hesitiant and gung ho approach for you.  I went to a lovely presentation led by our chiropractor a little while back and he gave us a fun little goody bag to take home.  It felt like christmas to me. (Is that nerdy when you think a bag full of health products is like christmas??) Anyways, I have to say honestly, I didn't try these until just a few weeks ago. We normally have wheat or barley grass groing at the house and never needed this supplement, but lo and behold, I found myself without any grass and I was feeling very heavy and cloudy.  I rummaged through my "medicine box" (which is really just an herb box ha!) and saw these- I looked at the ingredients and was so excited.  (the picture above only shows the berry first packet but I also had a greens first sample and needless to say they are all gone :))
So I mixed it with some water and it was not bad at all and I felt great!  Now don't get me wrong, there is nothing that takes the place of fresh juiced grass- nothing! But,, it was darn close 2nd.
So I will leave it at this today, but soon I will post a 2nd addition to this post and tell you and show you all about wheatgrass and how we do that!

Potato harvest soup

This is a soup that adds a lot of veggies in a very non-threatening way.  And whats more is that you can throw whatever is left in your fridge in there and it is great. Next time I think I will add some corn too.

Recipe:
6-8 gold potatoes (or any you have on hand)
red pepper
4-6 carrots
zucchini
yellow squash
onion
garlic
leafy greens (kale, spinach, chard, etc)
leftover quinoa, millet, teff, amaranth

Chop and put all but greens and pre-cooked grains in a pot and cover with water and generously salt. (If you have grains not yet cooked, throw them in there too).  Then when almost ready to serve throw in chopped greens.  Bring to a boil then simmer on low for 20-30 min.  Voila! Serve with some crusty bread.

P.S.  Some poeple would frown upon salting generously but instead of using chicken stock filled with sodium we are using ingredients we have control over. Besides when you cut out all of the refined foods and processed foods and make from scratch you don't need to worry as much about sodium content.  People with sodium issued almost always eat a diet high in processed and highly refined foods and very little fiber. NOT HERE MAN!!

Raw broccoli salad


I just have to say before beginning here that my husband informed me that he no longer wants any "regular" salads, he "only wants the raisin one and the caesar one." So here is our wonderful broccoli salad that is more healthy than others out there.  It is soooo delicious and broccoli is so good for you too.  I got my inspiration on the dressing from the wonderful blog http://healthyeasyrecipes.blogspot.com/  and just added a little mayo because my family is used to it that way but great without too.
Recipe:
2 crowns of broccoli- cut into bite-sized pieces
1 apple cut into bite-sized pieces
hanful of raisins or dries cranberries
1/4 C sunflower seeds
1/2 red onion sliced thin
dressing:
1/4 C olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and maple syrup (maybe not that much on the syrup-but add 'to taste'
salt and pepper and a little mayo (omit mayo if you do not use this and still great!)
YUM!