Author: louisaenright

April 22, 2020

Turkey Tracks: Roast Chicken: The Backbone of Many Meals

What’s your favorite part of the chicken?

Mine, hands down, is the roasted skin, followed by the drumsticks, wings, and thighs. Most of the time, the breast in today’s quick-growing chicken tastes like sawdust to me—dry and tasteless. But, I persist. And from time to time can buy locally grown pastured heritage chickens. They are delicious.

It’s so sad to me to see all those skinned chickened pieces in the grocery store because they are tasteless and dry out so fast when you cook them. And the best nutrients and fat in chicken is right under the skin. I can tell you that my grandparents ate the skin, ate meat fat, and they lived to ripe old ages and were not fat.

Anyway, you can see this chicken is accompanied by a sweet potato and a handful of small red and golden beets. You don’t have to peel them when they are small. Just wash them good, quarter or halve them and drizzle them with some fat and whatever herbs or spices you want.

Enjoy this first meal—I hope you add something green to it. I added fresh asparagus cooked in boiling water for only a few minutes. I like my veggies crisp/tender. Asparagus is in season now—it is an early spring crop. The raw apple is for dessert.

So, now you have leftover meat. That meat can go into a salad, sandwiches, stir frys, etc. But the biggest asset you have is the chicken carcass. Put it in a pot that will hold it and add water to more than cover it. You can add some savories as well: onion, garlic, celery, carrot. Cook at least one hour. Longer is even better as you start to get a genuine bone broth, which is so, so, so healthy. By long, I mean 12 hours or more—and if you use a crock pot, there are no worries about leaving a cooking pot on the stove unattended.

Drain the stock through a strainer, throw out the spent veggies and bones, and DO NOT SKIM AND THROW OUT THE FAT from the broth! You would be throwing away a nutrient dense ingredient.

At this point, you can refrigerate the broth or make a soup or stew right away. Don’t let the broth hang around for longer than one day. Freeze it or make something.

Here’s the chicken rice soup I made. I froze half of it and had three or four hearty servings over the next few days. That’s a heated corn tortilla with raw butter slowly melting—it’s the closest thing I can get to that is like bread. Sprinkle it with salt. The apple is for dessert.

I eat one fruit serving a day most days. Apple works best for me as it has natural antihistamine properties. My favorite is a Honey Crisp apple, but they don’t keep well, so I have to eat as many as I can in the fall. Fruit sugar, like all sugars, can cause inflammation, so cut back to reasonable amounts?

Hey! For added nutrients, try dropping a spoonful of raw milk yogurt or raw heavy cream on your soup. And any soup can be made into a cream soup by just adding…cream. Or some whole milk. It’s a good way to change a soup that you’ve already made for a new taste.

Here’s the start of a roasted veggie dish. I used Red Palm oil, which I melted right in the pan here. Red Palm oil is a powerhouse, medicinal fat. I’ve written other posts on this oil, which comes solid, like coconut oil. You can search on the right side bar for more information. And I have not used toxic aluminum foil in two decades. What you see here is parchment paper, which works just fine. It can take up into the 500s with no problem.

So here’s my meal with leftover, reheated gently, chicken. The roasted veggies only take about 30 to 35 minutes to roast. To heat the chicken, put it in the roasting pan for about 10 minutes or less. Drizzle some water over it to keep it from drying out.

No, I do not have a microwave and haven’t had one for decades now. Microwaves heat food, but they also distort the food and the taste of the food. I can taste microwaved food from a restaurant (or could, when I could still eat in restaurants). It does not taste right. It has a whang to it. And this microwave thing is one thing that has destroyed human abilities to taste real food.

Another Week, Another Chicken

It’s another week, and I’ve roasted another chicken. This soup is lighter as it is going over rice noodles as I can’t eat pasta. Noodles are a real treat for me! They are highly processed though, and all I have to do is look at them to put on weight. (All grains turn into sugars in the body.) But when I have a yen for some noodles, and I have not had them recently, they are such a joy.

I also added chicken parts to enrich this broth. This time drumsticks, as that is what I had on hand. When they are done, I’ll take the meat off the bone. I add the spring onions and kale last and basically let them cook only about 10 minutes.

Here’s the finished soup.

And here’s my noodle soup dinner—look at those fresh berries just coming into our markets now’!

The next day, I added a two chopped up boneless chicken thighs, a handful of quinoa shells, and some corn to the soup.

The day after that, I added some cream and put some shredded mozzarella on top.

Whoa! That bowl was way too full. This overflowing bowl is a case of neatness: cleaning out the pot. I only ate half at lunch; the other half I ate at dinner, alongside plate of sauteed zucchini and a pan-fried little cube steak.

Have you been counting how many meals I get off of one roasted chicken? Add in at least two or three days of meat for salads at lunch. The point is, good food can be expensive, but if you take full advantage you knock back the per item initial cost AND you have healthy, fun meals.

I’m sure you’re happy by now that I did not buy a whole chicken this week. OK, I did, but I put it in the freezer. Tonight: braised lamb shanks with onions and carrots, a baked potato (Russet), fresh asparagus, and more of the DELICIOUS blueberries and raspberries that are on sale in my local market.

April 17, 2020

FOOD!

I will never go hungry because I have not cooked for myself.

Back in the day when I was young and during the first 20 years of my marriage, one only went to restaurants for special celebrations as they were scarce and expensive. I cooked. We all cooked. And as my mother grew up in a farm community, gathering food, cooking, and eating were important and fun parts of each day. Frequently, during one meal, the adults would discuss and plan the next one! Food and eating tasks were shared and enjoyed by all members of the family as the men often were the prime food gatherers and instigators of special meals. The men were definitely in charge if outdoor cooking was involved.

OK, I’ll confess. These days I HAVE to cook with my Histamine Intolerance issues. Restaurant food has too many unknown ingredients that could trigger a reaction. Ditto any food someone else cooks for me. And the smells in restaurants don’t work for me either—food particles in the air are a problem. And the smells that reside on other people (personal body products, laundry products, etc.) are serious triggers for me. But I come to this issue well prepared.

And I don’t let this situation hold me back. I just take my own “safe” food with me. And in good weather, I especially like to take a picnic somewhere scenic—or to my own back deck with a good book.

Here are some recent meals I’ve enjoyed. I try to cook for more than one meal at a time, but not too many as “old” food acquires too much histamine and sets me to itching. If I make a big soup or stew, I freeze about half of it. Then, yeah!!, I have a “free” meal to enjoy.

There is nothing for breakfast that I can eat without tempting fate. My breakfast is a big cup of coffee loaded with our local raw heavy cream and a bit of our local honey. By lunch, I am hungry.

Lunch is, most often, a BIG salad with lots of raw veggies and a meat protein. I use herbs, salt, and a drizzle of EVOO olive oil since I cannot do vinegar. The taste of the veggies comes through loud and crunchy and, often, very sweet. I don’t miss the vinegar because once I got away from it, or lemon, my tastes changed. Suddenly I could really taste the vegetables, and they were delicious.

This salad has a bed of mixed lettuce, some diced roasted chicken, a bit of organic cottage cheese (which I seem to be able to eat even though it has a bit of vinegar to make it…cottage cheese), some cooked snow peas and broccoli, and raw red onion, red bell pepper, carrots, cucumbers, some dried dill, sea salt, and 1 1/2 tablespoons of EVOO olive oil. My garden is emerging, so soon I’ll have fresh herbs galore.

Look at this pretty beef stew. Some of this one is frozen, and I could eat it for lunch or dinner.

Any stew is easy peasy. Saute the meat (1 1/2 or 2 pounds of stew meat or lamb shanks or short ribs). in some beef tallow or chicken fat until it starts to brown—in a really oven-proof HEAVY pot. Add some liquid, enough to cover the meat, herbs, garlic, onion, and stick it in the oven for an hour at 350 degrees. Add chunks of potato and carrots for another 30 minutes. If you want chunks of cabbage, add that so it cooks 15 to 20 minutes and call it a day. Make sure you don’t let the liquid run dry. You could add some rice flour or wheat flour if you want a heartier gravy when you add the vegetables. Only 2 tablespoons or so. Those of you who can eat tomato could add them. Or spices you like.

Here’s the start of a stirfry that might get some meat added at the end or might just be a side dish. For fat use, chicken fat, beef tallow, REAL pork lard, or coconut oil. Add salt and spices/herbs you like and cook on fairly high heat. Turn often so the veggies don’t burn. If the pan gets too hot, add a little water and cut it out. That can make the veggies limp though—just so you know. Adding meat cools the pan too and adds enough liquid to stop the overheating. You can use ground meat, thinly sliced raw chicken, or cooked meat. For the cooked meat, you won’t get liquid, so add a little.

Here’s a meatloaf dinner with thawed frozen berries for dessert (with some maple syrup or special honey from DIL Tami).

Here’s how this meatloaf started out:

Two pounds of ground meat (this one was local grass-fed hamburger and lamb), a handful of oats, two duck eggs because I can get duck eggs locally and do better with them, grated carrots and zucchini, some red onion, some grated mozzarella cheese, some herbs, some salt, and a bit of milk to help combine it all. The grated veggies and cheese keep the meatloaf moist.

Here it is ready to cook—with some tomato ketchup drizzled over. I can’t always do the ketchup, but today I could:

Half of this meatloaf is in the freezer. I started to really freeze seriously in case I did get a bad case of the virus. So I will not hurry to eat this saved food quite yet.

My food is simple—and filled with herbs. (Yes, I miss spices.). Because the ingredients are local and fresh and clean, they taste really good. But, I have to say that my food does not need a lot of spices to jazz it up because it has not lost its own “good.”

I’m lucky.

PS: Look for the upcoming post on roast chicken—it’s the backbone of many meals.