Taking Stock

Bone broths - otherwise known as stocks - are one of the most nutritious and healing substances on the planet, not to mention *delicious* and the foundation of most cuisine. My wonderful cousin provided me with some packages of meaty soup bones from her brother (also my wonderful cousin, natch!) and I made stock from them. The journey of this particular batch of stock seemed noteworthy, so I've written about it.

- One day, I took the soup bone package out of the freezer and put the wrapped package on a plate in the fridge to thaw slowly and safely.

- A couple (few?) days later, I got out the thawed bones & rinsed them off. I oiled the roasting pan with coconut oil, threw in the soup bones and a couple of onions, quartered, and roasted them in the oven for about 30m or so, flipping them over halfway through. I dumped all into a stock pot, covered with water, added a few herbs (thyme, rosemary, ??), and a couple of good splashes of raw apple cider vinegar, and let it all simmer overnight. The vinegar is important to help the stock leach the good minerals from the bones and make them available to your body.

- The next morning, I turned it off & let it cool. Later that day, I strained it through a colander & pulled out the meat pieces and set them aside (in a container in the fridge). I strained the stock through a mesh strainer & put the bowl into the fridge for the fat to congeal. The bones went to the very happy dogs!

- The next day (or so, LOL) I fished the congealed fat off the top, and decanted the stock into pint jars. Labelled, and back into the fridge they went. (I saved the fat & added it to the dogs' food that night.)

- Another day, I put 1 1/2 pints of stock into a pot, added the reserved meat, some salt, and called it soup. However, the meat was way too dry to eat, so I ended up just drinking the stock, and put the meat back into the fridge.

- Another day, I put the meat, broken up into little pieces, into the rice cooker. I added a very small onion, chopped; 3/4 cup short grain brown rice; 2 cups beef broth; 1/4 cup water. Threw in some salt & herbs, and set it to cooking. When it was done, I thawed a couple cups of frozen peas under running water, put them in a bowl, and dumped the rice on top. To this mix I added a few T butter. We had a little bit of this left over, so into the fridge it went.

- Today, I took the little bit of leftover rice, meat, & peas, and put them in a pot with another jar (pint) of the original stock, hotted it up, added ample salt and a couple T of butter, and called it soup. This time, the soup was good!

- I still have two pints of beef stock in the fridge for future use. A long way from just one package of soup bones!

Checking in

oh my gosh, so much to talk about!

i got my new mini netbook and i looooove her! her name is isadora. i've been waiting for this, now that i can type literally anywhere, the two of you who read this will be hearing from me a lot more now! yay!!!

i drove to houston today to meet my friend susan at the ballet. it was a mixed rep performance by the houston ballet and we just loved it. it sparked some thoughts & desires about dance & movement.

i had to wear three hats (metaphorically) at church today, it was funny and a little frantic. one of the jobs was to serve as lector, and one of the readings had something that made me think, "wait a minute, i always hear that the opposite way around! funny how it's been distorted..."

if you haven't heard/seen, we have a new "baby"! a basset named Lily. she's not really a baby, she's the same age as Suki, 2ish. I'll get a photo of her on the main page of this blog asap.

oh and i've had a post brewing about a wasted life...

and of course i should report in from week seven of the mc combs plan!

okay so teasers for you and reminders for me. talk to you again soon!

PS In case you've ever wondered - Everything really *is* beautiful at the ballet!

**update** i forgot to mention the post that's REALLY burning a hole in my brain, which is about REAL food and restaurant food and etc.

so now that's noted and will be written about later.

Party followup

So, the Dog Party was a huge success!!

Based on the RSVPs, I was expecting 14 dogs, but only 7 came. It was a good mix, though, so probably all for the best!

Go see photos from the party!

The captions tell the story of the dogs playing. None of the other dogs were as interested in the water as Suki was! But they all had a blast playing together. There are also way too many photos of the food and its preparation, LOL.

As for the foods: Well, the hummus and gazpacho were hits, as you've noticed from the requested recipes I posted.

The fruit purees didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped, but they weren't bad. I think just plain grapefruit juice would have worked better than trying to use the pulp and juice. Also, Note To Self: before whirling the pulp of three grapefruits in the small food processor, strain it so that the juice is held separately. Otherwise it leads to

The Great Exploding Grapefruit Extravaganza of 2008!!!

Um, yeah. A mess. A HUGE mess.
I saved the remaining berry purees and will probably make ice cream or something with them.

The minted yogurt with cucumber was fantastic, I thought. As noted in previous post, I strained the yogurt to thicken it, mixed in chopped fresh mint, sea salt, and just a tiny bit of ground cumin. If it were a fancy party, I would have put this mixture into a baggie, snipped off the corner, and piped a dollop onto each cucumber round for a fancy hors d'oeuvre. Since it was a casual party, I just put the slices & sauce out for dipping. Another way to serve it would be to chop the cucumber and mix it into the sauce. Then you've basically got Indian Raita or Greek Tzatziki.

Okay this is making me hungry and my dog wants to play, so, enjoy!

Yay Cooking!!

Man, I love throwing parties, because they give me the chance to play with new food ideas!

I'm trying to be gluten-free these days, so I planned the party food around that. I doubt that anyone will notice that anything is missing. Yes, except for those of you who read this and that I've mentioned it to. But you know what I mean.

Last week we went to The Mother Ship, and among all the other stuff we got, I bought a small exotic soda from Italy. It was grapefruit/strawberry. It was WAY too sweet for my taste, but it was an interesting combination. The way I make sodas these days is to take fruit juice and mix it with fizzy water (like Perrier.) So I thought, what if I make grapefruit and strawberry purees and mix with the fizzy? I also bought raspberries for the same purpose. I'll let you know how they come out!

I love apples and cheese, so I bought a log of goat cheese and some Pink Lady apples for that purpose. I'll make hummus and offer tortilla chips and veggies to dip it. I'm also straining some fabulous bulgarian yogurt. I'll mix fresh mint into it, and either mix in cucumber, or offer slices to dip it with. I got some of those great hothouse/english cukes for that. The big job today is to make gazpacho! I've been lamenting the lack of raw veggies in my diet (the enzymes they contain aid digestion) and gazpacho is a great way to get them! It's a lot of work to make, but then you have several days worth of veggies to "drink". I've also got two cantaloupes that should be fabulous, as they are sitting there smelling up my kitchen (in a good way!)

So anyway, it's a lot of light, cold, summery snacks for all the guests at Suki's party tomorrow!

Oh, yeah, I'm not sure who all reads this, but it's possible that someone would read it that wouldn't know - Sunday is Suki's first birthday, so I'm throwing her a party tomorrow evening! There will be something like 14 dogs running around my back yard... Crazy! I have two baby pools and two sprinklers for them to play in, almost 20 tennis balls, and a new HUGE rope toy for them to play with! So, of course all the food I'm making is for the humans who bring the dogs...

Okay. I have to go get in the shower and go to the chiropractor and run errands and get back here and start cooking. Happy Weekend!!

Ouch...

So yesterday afternoon, my next door neighbor called to ask me to feed her woofies while they are out of town this weekend. I was, of course, more than happy to do so. They have Roscoe the Border Collie and Shipley the (pit) Bulldog. (Think you know what a Pit Bull looks like? Try this quiz and be educated.) They are both unneutered and are backyard dogs, so they are very friendly and sweet but just totally hyper.

I took Suki for a walk in the heat around 4pm. I planned to come back, feed the boys, and head out to do a couple of errands on my way to Downtown Bryan for Art Step.

I have just thrown food over the fence to them before, but this time, Donna had told me where their bowls were, so I thought I'd feed them the way the family does. As I went in the gate, Shipley was trying to get out of it. I managed to hold him back, but Roscoe escaped. I wasn't too worried, he's the collie, so I figured he'd come back when he heard the food being poured. I got their bowls and despite my best efforts, Shipley managed to get past me this time as I went out the gate to get the food. *sigh*.

I banged the bowls together and hollered for them, filled the bowls & went into the backyard to put them down. Sure enough, both dogs came tearing back into the yard. But now they were between me and the open gate. Dang. They dithered a moment, "Food? Freedom? Food? Freedom?" and then high tailed it out the gate. *sigh*.

I put the food up on a table so they wouldn't be able to get it right away if they came back. I walked out & couldn't see them, so I went to my house and got Suki's leash (boy, was she confused!), and started walking the way I'd seen them head off. A gal came around the corner and said she'd seen them go out of the neighborhood, across the park, down the street and onto a side street. *sigh*. She had tried to stop them but couldn't get to them in time.

I went back, got my purse, got in the truck, and started to drive around looking for them. I passed the other gal who was doing the same thing, and we just raised our hands at each other in a gesture of "I have no idea?!!"

Finally I rounded a corner, and there was a guy who had just put them in the back of his truck to take them to the shelter. I asked him to follow me back, so he did, and I went into the yard with the dogs, gave the guy back his leash, thanked him profusely, and off he went.

I put the food down for the boys, but they were way too hot/thirsty/excited/spun up to even think about eating at that moment. They had plenty of water and whatnot, so I figured my work was done, and went to leave. And since the food was no distraction for them, Shipley tried to get out again. I was not *about* to let that happen! I grabbed his collar and scruff with my wussy-grip hands, pinned him with my body and did everything I could to get him back in the gate.

He would stand up, but as soon as I got him partway in the gate, he'd hunker down and refuse to go in. Every time I got him through the gate, he would manage to get between it before I could close it. This wrestling match went on for a good ten minutes. I was sweating, and grunting, and cursing, and panting. I refused to let go of the freaking dog, but it literally took every ounce of strength I had. I was quite literally roaring with effort and frustration. Meanwhile, I think Roscoe went in and out of the gate probably three times, LOL.

With a last burst of complete adrenaline-fueled effort, I managed to ROLL the dog through the gate so that he was on his back or side, and the second it took him to get up was enough time to get the gate shut. I stood up, covered in dirt and sweat and slobber and red-faced equally from the heat and the frustration. I was breathing so hard that I was practically hyperventilating, and I started to cry. I got the keys out of my truck, went into the house, sat down and cried hysterically for about ten more minutes.

Then, I went upstairs, took a COLD shower, changed clothes, and headed out to Art Step, finally. So much for the errands I meant to do on the way - the places were closed by now. Oh well, nothing I can't do on Monday!

So, all is well now, but you can BET that I threw their food over the fence today!! And I am so sore that I can barely move, and it hasn't even been 24 hours yet. Scare. So much for the massage and chiropractic adjustment I got yesterday morning!! *sigh*!

And so much for the productive Saturday I meant to have. I started this post about three hours ago. It's 2:30 in the afternoon and I am still sitting here at the computer in my pajamas... Eek! So, off to do housey things! Enjoy the new blog!