Nine Chickens and Other Assorted Tales

Those who know me understand I that have just a teensy bit of OCD in me. Most often manifested in the form of travel manifestos, a rather large computerized recipe collection and not being able to throw away food. With regard to the latter, it is probably the part of my behavior that gets teased most often.

I know I have a problem. I have made shrimp stock on vacation.

Multiple times.

A person would think I grew up during the depression, saving every little scrap for those 'harder times'. My mother does not do this. I don't know where it comes from. All the same, it's become a part of me and those around me have learned to giggle about it (I hope). I also have gotten into the habit of buying things on sale -- kind of difficult when you have limited freezer space. However, we bought a fridge before we moved into our house since the house didn't come with one. When we got here... tah dah, there's another fridge in the kitchen that they didn't take (or tell us about) afterall. No complaints, but hmmmm. Lent helped Ken move the old fridge to the basement and put the new one in... which has an icemaker. Fancy. Anyway, now we have two fridge/freezers. My dream come true. I just turned it on this past week and moved our fridge & freezer's extra contents downstairs tonight. So now if you open the door, you'll see:

9 frozen roasting chickens (on super sale)
6 bags of turkey stock (2 cup aliquots)
3 bags of beef stock (2c aliquots)
2 bags spaghetti sauce (2c aqts)
6 cans frozen OJ (left from previous tenants)
and in the fridge is two 12 packs of PBR (on sale for under $5 each)
2 bottles wine
3 bottles champagne (Mmm-Mimosas)

I can't wait to stock the fridge with microbeers and/or homebrews when people come to visit. Put a turkey in that sucker come Thanksgiving time. Hell, I can even brine the whole thing in a stockpot IN the fridge. Wow. I'm excited. The possibilities are endless.

With regard to the chickens, we've actually already eaten three... meaning we had (gulp) twelve at one time. Roast those suckers up with a digital thermometer set for 165 and you've got an awesome meal with minimal work. Ken started cooking them for me. He even learned to make a killer gravy out of the giblets. A man after my own heart. Oh wait, I married him. Hooray! Anyway, it's been awesome. But what to do with those chicken carcasses since we work during the week and don't want to be bothered with making stock on weekends.

Behold, the crockpot.

After carving up the bird, throw the carcass in the crockpot with an onion, some garlic, carrots, celery, a bay leaf & fill with water. Cover and put in the fridge. In the morning, we'll pull out the filled crockpot and set it on low for 10 hours. Strain it when you get home and you're ready to go... make chicken & dumplings or just freeze the stock. It makes me so happy.

Thus instead of cooking I get to drink lemon drop martinis now while Ken is playing poker. And never fear, I used the zest of the lemon to flavor a third of a batch of ice cream I'm making from some whole milk I bought last week to make soup. Making three flavors: 1/3 French Vanilla; 1/3 Lemon Zest; 1/3 Chocolate.

Life is good.