Bob

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Johnny and I rode our bikes to Porter Farms and Nursery yesterday, about a mile, and bought fresh green beans for dinner.  Donnie has me considering biking places instead of just hopping in my van for short trips.  I can manage to ride my bike with the Canon SX40 HS around my neck.  I'm sure you'll understand that being able to take my camera with me is of course the deciding factor in my transportation choices;-)  At any point, the girls up there were having some fun with vegetable creations.  I thought Bob was rather crafty!

Speaking of veggies.  I embarked on a new cooking adventure Wednesday, making chicken stock, and I ended up making a great chicken soup for lunch yesterday too.  It was quite possibly the best chicken soup I've ever made or had.

Below is a picture of the soup, and here are the details.  They say there are a lot of healthy benefits to making the stock this way, so consider giving it a try.

For starters, I bought a chicken directly from a farmer.  My first and not last!  It was cleaned up and ready to cook but fresh and healthy and free of any injected crap and a whopping 6lbs.  I roasted it in the oven about like you'd expect putting carrots and onions underneath it and not using any chicken bouillon like I would have in the past.   I browned it nice by rubbing olive oil and spices on it.  We had it for dinner with sugar snap peas and a salad, and it was yummy!  Afterward, Donnie wanted me to try making real chicken stock from bones, so I got out my pasta pot, put the bones in the colander part, added enough water to cover, and proceeded to create the stock.  Here's the recipe that I used.  I see no reason to wait to add the veggies and spices, and I let mine cook for more like 5 hours.  It was so easy to lift up the colander to remove the bones from the broth, but what about the veggies?  We decided to carefully remove the bones and add the veggies back.  We figured there was a small risk for bones left in but worth the risk.  I had hoped that the stock would have a great flavor, but it was kindof so so without any salt or real spices.  But I guess that's the way it was supposed to be.  We put it in the fridge to cool overnight.

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I used this recipe to turn the stock into soup.  I take liberties with just about every recipe I use, but you get the gist.  I used olive oil to saute an orange bell pepper, an onion, and minced garlic.  I added in the 4 cups of stock.  I did not add additional celery as the stock had some in it.  I didn't have the spinach to add at the end either.  I ended up adding 2 teaspoons of salt, a generous amount of Texas Pete, the soy sauce, a bit of basil, and pepper.  I put in a pinch of tarragon and sprinkled in some poultry seasoning (rosemary) too.  I kept finessing the flavor trying to bring out the best in the stock and I think it worked.  Then I added in some leftover link style chicken and spinach sausage and a bunch of the leftover chicken which Donnie had deboned for me along with the carrots that I had roasted under the chicken the night before.  Wow!  Donnie and the boys and I ate it up for lunch big time!  Thankfully, there are two bowls of soup left and enough chicken stock to make soup again real soon.