What’s the strangest item you’ve brought home from a restaurant?

For me, I think it might be the quail bones I brought home on Saturday. I also brought home one tiny chicken leg bone, but between it being both small and chicken, it hardly counts.

This is a habit I think Jonathan Bloom of Wasted Food would at least somewhat approve of, but I’m not sure. Don’t think I won’t ask him, though!

I bring home bones. I don’t own dogs, and even if I did I wouldn’t give them most bones from restaurants. But I bring home bones anyway.

Though I cited Bloom and Wasted Food as deeper influences a week ago on my state of mind, I’ve been bringing bones home from restaurants since last December. And frugality, not waste, was really the motivation.… Continue reading →

Stock tragedy

My freezers are perpetually full. I think this is a regular complaint here on MetaCookbook. No matter how hard I try to get them a little emptier, it seems I end up with freezers full to bursting.

One of the issues I normally have is stock. See, making stock is something I always think of as a way to clear out the freezer. Typically, this is because I have three to five chicken carcasses1 stuck in there, as well as chicken trimmings and the trimmings of veggies. My thinking is that this will get that stuff out of the freezer. The bags of trimmings, the big plastic containers of bones.

I never manage to consider how much stock will end up back in the freezer.… Continue reading →

[125] Greek Lemon Soup – Meatless Monday

Cover of The Joy of Cooking (1997 reprint of 1975 edition)

Have I mentioned I’m resolved to try to participate in “Meatless Mondays”? I’m doing it mostly for personal health reasons (I’d also like to lose some weight and such), but also environmental reasons. Finally, it’s a surprisingly large challenge for me. I count anything with a face as “meat” and I aim to be completely meatless one day a week. So this means no fish, no fowl, no mammals in the most obvious form – meat – but also in less obvious forms, such as broth and stock.

I’m not always good at this. It’s been touch and go since I started the challenge. I haven’t managed it every week, but I think I’ve managed more weeks than I haven’t. Of course, since I hadn’t been tracking this in any way until a couple of weeks ago, I can’t actually say.… Continue reading →

[81] Vegetable Stock

the cover of The Enchanted Broccoli Forest

Okay, this is very easy and quick to write up. It’s so quick that I’m putting it all right here.

Also, I should tell you this: I didn’t follow this recipe on purpose. It’s just what I do to make stocks of all kinds, in general. However, when I went to got make turkey stock this year, I found I’d saved so many veggie bits in the freezer that I didn’t have room for the turkey carcass. So I made veggie stock and had another recipe. WOO!

h2. Ingredients

The cleaned skins and peels from veggies such as onions, carrots and potatoes. The tops and bottoms of these veggies too. Other veggies that are limp, but otherwise alright can go in there as well. Avoid strongly flavored stuff; cauliflower, broccoli, etc.… Continue reading →