Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!  My last acts of 2009 included:

• making BBQ Chicken Pizza (best yet)
• making Chicken Broth from scratch (who would have known it's so easy?)
• making a bread starter (from the book, Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day)
• creating a scrapbook page of my best girl friends

                                      

                                      

Making this page was a lot of fun and very simple.  I scanned a page from the book, The Cat in the Hat, used my Cricut  to cut out the title on "BlingBlackTie" Bazzill Cardstock, used thick adhesive to make our Halloween Picture "pop" on the page, and used Black ColorBox Pigment Ink to shade my little text lines.  The red, blue & white cardstock were from "the summer cardstock stack" I bought on clearance last summer.

Disclaimer:  This scrapbook page is for my personal use only - I do not intend to sell, publish or advertise with the Dr. Seuss content.


Chicken Broth
I looked at recipes from Julia Child's The Way to Cook and Bruce Weinstein & Mark Scarbrough's The Ultimate Cook Book (and the ingredients I had available) before making chicken stock with the following ingredients:

• 2 chicken carcasses (1 from a cooked rotisserie chicken & 1 from an uncooked, organic, free-range chicken), including necks, backs, wings, etc. with a little meat clinging to the bones
• 1 large onion, roughly chopped
• 4 carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
• 2 celery sticks, roughly chopped, leafy green tops included
• 5 sprigs parsley
• 5 dried mushrooms
• 1 bay leaf
• 10 black peppercorns
• 1 tsp. Kosher salt
• Water 

1. Toss all ingredients in a big, sturdy stockpot.  
2. Fill pot with water to cover ingredients by about 1".  
3. Bring to a boil.  Skim scum off top as needed.
4. Reduce heat to a very gentle, barely bubbling simmer.  Cover with lid, leaving a tiny air space.
5. Simmer ~2 hours.
6. Scoop out big pieces of vegetables & bone.  Very carefully (stock will be hot!), pour stock through colander lined with cheesecloth.  Repeat as necessary until remaining stock is perfectly clear.  
7. Cool.  (Fill an empty plastic bottle with water & freeze.  Then stir cooling stock with it.  Simple tip from The Best Soups & Stews).  You could also place the bowl of stock in an ice-filled sink or larger ice-filled bowl to cool.
8. Pour into storage containers and refrigerate.  Remove fat that hardens at top.  Use immediately or freeze.  (Fat can also be removed right after cooling with a fat separator, which is one gadget I do not own).

This recipe gave me 11.5 cups of chicken broth.  The final amount of chicken broth may vary, but I think 10 cups is a safe estimate.

* Next time, I'll try to take photos as I go.