As my brain has become more and more compromised, I have become more and more squeamish. Sometimes, it embarrasses me. Sometimes, I can ignore it. Tonight, I had to battle it more than I ever have before.
I had a turkey carcass on my stove. Ewwww!!!!!!
When I was a missionary in Africa, the only poultry you could get was a whole chicken. From a farmer. A recently deceased chicken. Being slightly squeamish then, I paid my guy extra to pluck it, take out the innards, and stick it in a plastic bag so my chickens would look as close to that which you might find in a grocery store in America.
I would boil the chicken until all the meat fell off and then use the meat in 15 Bean Soup. Of course, I could never get ahold of all 15 beans, but it was still 15 Bean Soup. More like a stew. Goulash, maybe? In any case, I trashed the bones. However, once the Liberians discovered that I was throwing them away, they asked me for them. Liberians eat chicken bones. Ewwwwwww!!!! Oh, the gales of laughter my heebie jeebies brought to my Liberian neighbors!
Each chicken cooking, word would spread that bones would soon be available. I would very carefully clean out the plastic bag my "Americanized" chicken came in and then fill it back up with the bones and skin. When it comes to dark meat, I was really overly generous about leaving it on the bone. I am not a dark meat kind of girl. Hordes of children would hover just in the palm trees, vying to be the first to grab the bag. When I was ready, I would snake my arm through a crack in the door and set the bag on the stoop. Before the door was close, one of the children would have darted forward and snatched the prize.
I knew they wanted the bones and they knew I wanted them to have to bones, but pretending that I was not giving them away was better for all. It is hard to explain, but it was sort of a saving face kind of move. Inside, I would smile, listening to the chatter about how foolish I was to be throwing away good food.
Fast forward two and a half decades, and when it came time to pick the turkey at our Thanksgiving, I offered to do it for Marie. After all, my time as a missionary made me an excellent picker.
The pain of sitting in a chair long enough to do so was a bit more than I bargained for, however. I moaned and groaned my way through the second half of the job. Merciful as she is, Marie offered to take over for me. But I was already a mess and wanted to push through. I ended up with two gallon-sized Ziplock bags of skin, bones, and bits of meat. I will admit that part of my battle that day was when I started to actually think about what I was doing. My squeamishness started to rise about three quarters of the way through. Of course, I did not mention my silly feelings to Marie. I just kept on picking.
Well, Marie forgot the bones. So, I put them in the freezer. Weather and travel plans meant that Marie didn't get a chance to fetch them. Thus, I found myself the heir to the bags of bones. [A tiny bit of wheedling might have been involved.]
With all this recipe hunting, I have found many that called for homemade broth/stock. Seeing that ingredient over and over again, I started to think about trying to make my own. I had heard that you can do so with a rotisserie chicken and thought I might go that route. Marie mentioned that she saved vegetable scraps for her broth, so I saved the celery left over from our Thanksgiving and I cut off and saved the bottoms of my asparagus and the stalks of my broccoli (I am a florets kind of girl), thinking I might try to make stock/broth. I welcomed my inheritance.
I found this blog entry about stock verses broth that was interesting to me. However, at the end of it, I simply was not sure I really understood the difference once I finished with it. Even so, I decided tonight was the night to make my attempt.
How convenient is it that my cookware set came with a stock pot??
I followed the recipe mostly, but added in my leftover scraps, extra rosemary (since there was bits on our turkey), and minced garlic instead of the clove (I'm saving my last two garlic bulbs for roasting). I couldn't find a whole carrot at Target when I fetched my prescription today, so I bought the baby carrots and tried to guestimate how many make up a carrot. Looking at this, I wonder: How is making stock/broth any different from making chicken (turkey) soup?? I also was certain my old Liberian neighbors would have been cackling for hours over all the stuff in here I would be throwing out just to get flavored water.
Even knowing that there was a possibility I might end up with good stock/broth, I still spent three hours wiggin' out that there was a turkey carcass on my stove. My squeamishness grew exponentially each time I went to the stove to stir the stock/broth. I cannot decide if it was worse before the carcass completely fell apart or after. SHUDDER. I will admit that I nearly vomited several times scooping out the bones and vegetables before straining the stock, but I thought that the advice to clear out the big stuff before starting to strain was wise. I actually had to leave the kitchen for a while once I saw the wishbone. Ewwwwwwww!
In the end, I have a nice collection of bottles of stock/broth, don't you think? Each bottle is one and a half cups, with enough room (hopefully) to expand as it freezes.
I will say that this reinforces my desire to get a small chest freezer for the back porch (or garage). Three of my freezer shelves are filled with ice packs for the back of my head. That does not leave lots of space for food. And it leaves virtually no room for things like left overs and stock/broth. But, as I cook more, I really like the idea of being able to save left overs rather than to just plow through what I cooked for several days until it is gone. Space really is why I had not made my lentils in so long. Space and remembering, of course.
The thing that makes me laugh is that in all my bookmarking of recipes, I have not singled out the ones requiring stock/broth. SIGH. Amos did suggest that I could just pour it over his food each day instead of stressing myself out trying to find those recipes again.
My treat today (other than not failing at stock/broth making) was a present from my realtor. Well, several presents. Amos has a new baby, Purple Bone Baby. Canine happiness abounds in my abode. I was given a bottle of wine, some fire starters, some fuzzy GREEN socks, and some very, very, very, very healthy whole grain round loaf bread.
I sort of laughed at the wine because I had a gift card and decided to spend it in a very unpractical way: I bought six bottles of Barefoot Moscato that I got at a really great discount, piling sale price upon quantity discount upon a coupon discount ...$4.85 a bottle. After looking about for a space to put the wine, I thought about the extra space I had after spending the other night cleaning all the silverware and silver serving pieces and sorting out the things I wanted to pass on/donate, keeping just the things I might need. There was space all along the front of the lowest shelf, so I moved the stacks of silver serving pieces in front of each other and made my own wine cache. The key, now, is to make the wine last, instead of reveling in the great sufficiency of the moment. The gift wine, in case you are wondering, is a Gewurtztraminer, my favorite wine to have with food.
As to the bread, well I am not a very, very, very, very, very healthy whole grain round loaf bread kind of girl. I am a butter kind of girl. In fact, at the moment, I am a roasted garlic butter kind of girl. I cut a thick slab, slathered on my garlic butter, warmed the slab in the microwave, and sat before my fire.
Amos ate my crust for me.
I got to thinking ... I believe that making someone a container of roasted garlic butter might be a nice gift. Texting my realtor about consuming my slab of bread and about my butter thoughts, she volunteered to be first on my gift list. Wasn't that kind of her?!?
Have I mentioned lately how much Amos loves snoozing atop a quilt heated by an electric blanket beneath it??
The best part of the day? When she was here dropping off the gifts, my realtor had asked what I was doing for Christmas. I immediately responded, "Nothing." A little later on, she observed, "You don't want to be with my family." Beautiful words. Thinking I might think she was rude, thinking that I did not understand her, she immediately qualified, "You don't want to be with anyone's family, be an outsider, watching, as a family celebrates together." I did not need the qualification. I understood what she meant and my heart sang.
She's right.
That's just too painful for me right now.
I am not strong enough.
I loved that Marie and Paul had a Thanksgiving with me. If they, or perhaps my realtor and her husband, told me that they would like to have a Christmas with me, I would be thrilled. I am not sure how I would afford another feast, but I would get out all that freshly polished silver, crystal, and china again and start planning a menu. Having a Christmas other than December 25th is not as odd as having our Thanksgiving December 14th, because Lutherans actually celebrate all 12 days of Christmas. My realtor is now Catholic, but I think they do that, too. I would like such a thing, but I am not expecting it. The gift was simply that she understood how hard Christmas is for me ... especially now.
Actually, I had two best parts of the day. My friend Celia texted me an audio file of her reading a book with her young son. It was as if she asked me to sit down and read with them. I felt so much less alone.
I am Yours, Lord. Save me!
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