J act We have been trying to save money to the extreme this past year. I had started boiling whole chickens. One reason was because I wanted to save money, yet another reason was that it was useful for the next few days. I also knew that the whole chicken was supposed to be better for you.
I started by boiling the chicken in a pot of water with simple spices and cloves of garlic. Soon I threw in veggies. Mainly carrots, onions and celery. I have now been more and more interested in the Real Food lifestyle. Which I had always been swaying towards even before I started learning and reading about these smaller domestic farming ideals. I fell in love with Weed'em and Reap blog.
Definately let me know what you think. http://www.weedemandreap.com/
I have been curious what people think about these concepts.
One of the things I took away from these ideals is that orgins and the bones should be apart of our diet, and by slow simmering the chicken with its liver other bits for awhile and then retuning the meat picked chicken to slow cook made a really mean favoriful stock. This stock is then used in a lot of meals.
Once it had been strained and bottled. I take the bones and freeze them for the next whole chicken shock I make. I will freeze the tops of celery & carrots when I am using them for another meal and then I always have veggies to trow in the stock as well.
On a good week I make this twice. If I get extra stock that I am not sure when I will use I will freeze in muffin pans. Once frozen place in freezer bags for convenient cooking for any last-minute meals.
I have been improving my "ways" each time and this last chicken I used everything but a small portion of the bird. I saved back the scraps that were good for mattock, our dog, to feed him throughout the week as a supliment to his dry food.
This picture ain't pretty but I was still a wee bit proud of my efforts to use most the chicken.
This is what I did NOT use...
