... chicken stock

Hello everybody ...

I hope everyone is having a terrific weekend. The sun is shining brightly here in eastern Ontario even though it is still colder than normal.

I read not too long ago some statistics about food waste by North Americans. It stated that 30% - 40% of the food purchased was thrown away. I find that to be absolutely staggering. If you have read this blog before you know how I feel about wasting food. So today I thought I would share an idea about how to turn some scrap materials into something delicious. Chicken stock.

We eat quite a bit of chicken at our house. We are hoping that we may even have our own meat birds later this year. In the meantime I purchase chickens, usually whole, at the grocery store like most people. We either eat them whole as roast chicken or cut them up and use the pieces in a variety of ways. 

When we have a roast chicken we strip the carcass after dinner and pop all the bones into a bag in the freezer appropriately labelled "Chicken Bones". When the bag is full, I make chicken stock. That would usually be about 4 chicken dinners. 

For those of you who prefer not to eat meat, I also have a bag in the freezer labelled "Vegetable stock" into which I put bits of onion, celery trimmings, etc. and when it is full, I make vegetable stock. Same principle.

Now, back to the bag of bones. When it is full I simply dump it into a large stock pot. No need to even defrost. 

I add some chopped onion, carrot, bay leaves, peppercorns, parsley and a pinch of course sea salt. Fill it up with cold water and bring to a boil. 

I bring it to a boil and then simmer for a couple of hours. Then I just turn it off and let it get cool enough for me to handle it.

Now it needs to be strained. I know a lot of people use cheesecloth but I prefer to use a tea towel. I can use it over and over again and I just toss it into the laundry after use. I wet it thoroughly first and wring it out. Then I drape it over a large colander over a bowl large enough to hold all the stock. Pour everything from the pot into the colander. Most of the liquid will drain through right away. Now, gather up the corners of the tea towel and give it a good squeeze to get out all the good stuff.

Now you have a nice clear bowl of stock and a tea towel full of bones. Dump the bones back into the pot.

At this point I know that you will be tempted to just chuck all those bones into the garbage, thinking that they have done their job. Please think again.

I take the time to sort through all that stuff. There is usually quite a lot of meat still stuck to those bones. I pull all that meat off and put it into a bowl. I also pull out all the carrot pieces as the dogs will have that as a treat with their dinner. NOW, you can toss what is left into the rubbish bin.

There is usually enough chicken to make a small pot of soup so I add some vegetables, maybe some rice or noodles and a few cups of the stock and I have a lovely pot of soup for a few lunches.

I then put the big bowl of stock, covered, into the fridge. Any fat will rise to the surface and solidify and I can easily remove it the next day. I then pour the cold stock into plastic containers, label and date them, and put them into the freezer. A large pot of stock will usually give me about 20 cups of stock.

I know what you are thinking. That is an awful lot of work just for a few cups of stock. Why not just buy it? Well, first of all, why would you want to waste all that wonderful chicken when the stock you are making is basically free! And really, how much work is it? Just a bit of chopping and picking off the meat. Most of the time the stock is just cooking happily without any work by me. Also, where I live, chicken stock is expensive. And lastly, you know what is coming I am sure, just what is in that purchased stock. Have you ever read the labels? I know exactly what is in my stock ... just the good stuff.

So have a go at making stock. It is well worth it.

Thanks so much for stopping by. Hope you visit again soon. Cheers.

... time to cut wood

Hello everybody ...

I am back again with one more post for today.

We have two different heating systems in our home. We have a propane fireplace and a propane stove (it looks just like a wood stove) and we also have a wood burning cookstove in our kitchen.

That cookstove is the apple of my eye. It is a Pioneer Princess and it is just wonderful. Because our home is passive solar, we seldom have the woodstove going. I usually will light a fire in it around 4:00ish or so and then it warms up the house and I use it to cook on the top surface and in the oven also.

We absolutely love it here where we live, but, if we had just one thing that we could change it would be to have a hardwood wood lot. We have almost exclusively softwood here, mostly pine, spruce and cedar. Now the cedar is great for kindling but we prefer to burn hardwood for real heat, especially oak or ash.

So, the other day we purchased a tandem load of wood. It is sitting out there right now, just staring in at me. I will not be the one to cut and split it. That will be Frank's job. I will certainly stack it after it is cut. You know what they say about heating with wood. It warms you when you cut it, warms you when you stack it and then warms you again when you eventually burn it. So true. 

I got to thinking about that pile of wood and happened to look at the fliers that come with our local newspaper. And what did I happen to see but a sale on a 5 ton electric log-splitter from Canadian Tire. It was $200 off the regular price.

Off I went to the store and asked lots of intelligent questions but the most important one was "can I return it if my husband does not like it AFTER he tries it out". Absolutely, was the answer. Save your receipt.

So, in the next week or so Frank will start to saw up all that wood and we will get to see this puppy in action. I am hoping it is all that they say it is. Since it is electric, we are not using any fossil fuels to run it. I know it will not be as powerful as those huge gas guzzling 22 ton behemoths but if it can help out and make less work for Frank, then I think that it will be worth it. I really hope he likes it.

Stay tuned for the results.  Thanks so much for visiting. See you soon. Cheers.

... the joys of country living

Hello everyone,

A very good Monday morning to you all. It is a glorious day here in eastern Ontario. Lots of sunshine and it is supposed to warm up a little bit closer to seasonal today.

When we bought this little hobby farm we told our amazing Realtor Pat that we wanted to be out in the middle of nowhere. We did not want to see big box stores or strip malls or subdivisions springing up. 

What we did want was to be able to see nature all around us. And we got that.

I took this photo yesterday. Three lovely dear were wandering around the OUTSIDE of my kitchen garden fence nibbling at whatever they could find to eat. I took this shot from my living room window. They are really such beautiful creatures and I would never have had this view from my previous house.

This is truly one of the blessings of living a country life. We had friends staying here a few weeks ago. They are absolute city people. They love the hustle bustle of city life and all that it has to offer. 

Cathy got up the first morning they were here and commented " You guys have made this a little slice of heaven out here". Pretty high praise indeed from a city girl. We only built the house, the glorious meadows and trees were already here for anyone to enjoy and appreciate. Yes sir, the joys of living in the country.

Thanks a lot for visiting. Get outside and enjoy this beautiful Spring sunshine. Cheers.

... experiment update

Hello everyone,

I wanted to update you all on my little experiment of growing some veggies on the window sill in the house.

The micro greens are doing simply amazing. Here is a photo of them. They look wonderful and will be turned into a salad next week. I will just cut them off without pulling them out in the hopes that they will all regrow as they would outside in the garden, cut and come again.

Now these photos are of the green beans. These are the ones that I was told you cannot grow in the house. Well, just have a look at those lovely blossoms. I have been running my hands over the plants every day for a week or so now to simulate the wind outside.

And .... what should my wondering eyes see ... but... 

I do believe that is a very tiny little green bean, right in the middle of the photo. So cute!

Even if this never really produces very much, or even anything at all, I have enjoyed giving it a try.

Thanks so much for stopping by. Hope you have a terrific weekend. Cheers.

... stretch the food budget

Hello everybody,

Let's talk about food budgets. 

Our family, not unlike millions of others, has a budget for food shopping. And we stick to it. Like glue.

We set aside a specific amount each week for groceries. When I take the money out of the bank (I know, very old fashioned but it works for me), the first thing that I do is to take $20.00 out and set it aside. I do this each and every week. Then the balance of the money that I have is used to buy groceries.

I put that $20.00 aside and use it for the big holidays when you need to spend more on the groceries. You know, the Easter ham, Thanksgiving and Christmas turkeys, things like that. It is very easy to blow the budget to smithereens at the holidays. However, with this little nest egg tucked away, I have something to fall back on. Over the course of 52 weeks, that grows to $1040.00. I can very easily purchase ALL of the holiday goodies with that and in fact there is often some left over. 

It may seem like such a very small thing but this is how they did it for many many years in the past. Back then, they were called Turkey clubs or Goose clubs. The idea was the same. You would deposit a small amount each week with the club manager and at the end of the year you would get your turkey or goose for the holidays. It is like making payments on time for the bird.

The beauty of this simple plan is that you can choose to set aside whatever amount you want depending on the plans for the year and how much holiday entertaining you want to do. After a few weeks it is easy to forget all about that little nest egg until you need it. Give it a try.

Thanks for visiting today. Hope you have a wonderful Spring day! Cheers.

... plant hardiness

Hello everyone,

I subscribe to a wonderful Canadian gardening magazine simply called "The 
Gardener". Their main focus is gardening information for cool climates. 

Where I live in eastern Ontario, about an hour west of Ottawa, I fall within the parameters of their magazine. What I like most about it is that whatever they can grow out there on the Canadian prairies, I should be able to grow here. Also, much as I adore British gardening magazine and I do buy a couple, The Gardener is much more realistic. They do not feature exotics that I do have a hope of being able to grow. I love that.

In the latest issue, Spring 2015, there is an article which states that Canada has changed the Canadian Hardiness Zone map. This has been based on data collected between 1981 and 2010. 

I immediately went to the website, www.planthardiness.gc.ca, and found out that my zone has changed from 4b to 5a. I am very happy about that but the fact that I lost three zone 4 fruit trees last winter makes me beg to differ with that data. I suppose the "polar vortex" had something to do with that but we have certainly had our share of frigid temperatures this winter also.

The government website also includes the USDA Hardiness Zones which actually gives you the "Extreme Minimum Temperature Zones". When I checked that one, I am still in zone 4b.

While I think it may be very tempting to accept the change to zone 5a, the prudent gardener in me prefers to err on the side of caution and make my important planting decisions (like the replacement fruit trees) based on the USDA model of zone 4b.

I am certainly not averse to trying a few plants from zone 5 to have a go at them but I would not want to bet my winter food stores on it. The apple trees should certainly be OK for this area, in fact, all of them made it through last winter just fine. I did lose my peach (a rare Zone 4 hardy specimen called Reliance), a Pear and a Cherry. The Nectarine was hanging on by the skin of it's teeth, as they say. I will not be surprised if it is gone this spring due to another brutal winter.

I will remove the dead trees this Spring and prepare the sites for the newcomers which I will not likely plant until the fall. I will have to do some research to decide which trees to buy. While I may be tempted to have another try at the varieties that died, I think I will likely stick to the safer ones, namely zone 4 or cooler. 

Thanks so much for visiting. Hope you have a wonderful day. Cheers.

... passivhaus

Greetings to your all ...

In my last post I noted the extraordinary benefits of having a passive solar home. Admittedly the weather is much warmer here in Eastern Ontario than it has been but I have had no heat on in my house at all since Sunday night. As I type this I am wearing a tank top as I find the house, even at 6:30 in the early evening, to be very warm. The sun is now pounding in my living room window which has a completely west exposure, which is where I am sitting, and it is still 71 degrees in here. Completely amazing.

Now, on to another topic relating to passive solar.

Have you ever heard of "passivhaus"? We were introduced to it when we were designing the house.

The basic theory of passivhaus is to have the "envelope" of you house made as well as you possibly can. It should be insulated to the max, have the best possible windows and be virtually air tight.

We kept all this in mind when we were building. I do not believe that our home would qualify under the very strict passivhaus guidelines but we have incorporated their principles where ever possible.

For instance. Our home is built of straw bales. When we were sourcing out the bales we found someone who would bale them to our requirements. That being, very very tight and very very dry. What that means is that there is a whole lot of straw in these bales, thus providing a very good R-value.

When it came to the windows, we bit the bullet and bought triple-glazed windows. Our doors are virtually all glass and they are triple glazed as well. The company who made then, quite frankly, is better at windows than they are doors and we have had a few issues with the doors. On a whole though, we are very pleased. On a sunny day, the windows are actually hot to the touch.

Now let's talk about insulation in the attic. We had decided right at the start that we would go big on this area. And we did. We have R80 up there. Two feet thick of blown cellulose insulation. The fellow who put it in said he had never put that much insulation in a home before, actually not even a barn. It was worth every cent.

The last thing that we did was Frank did a very thorough caulking job all around all the doors and windows. He sealed where the window meets the jamb extension and then he also caulked there the bale wall meets the jamb extension. You need to seal up all those teeny weeny little cracks that can weaken your building envelope.

It may not be the most glamorous part of the construction process but all these things make the most difference in your home. Our house is now so tight that Frank has installed a "Saskatoon Loop" to being in fresh air. This is basically a piece of flexible duct work that is folded up into a sort of "J" shape that allows fresh air to travel down into the house. This little tip was given to us by our building official. He said that would be all we needed rather than a mechanical system, and he was right. 

Get the envelope right and then you can have fun on the inside later.

Thanks so much for stopping by. Have a great evening. Cheers.