Rainy day freezing
The freezer feels like it's filling up pretty fast this year. Part of that is the 75 pounds of chicken meat we
added this and last week, plus the gallons of chicken broth from feet
and necks of all the birds and from carcasses of the seven we parted out. The broth will be 
thawed back out in a month or two to form the base of tomato and vegetable soup, but right now the liquid takes up quite a bit of space.
Strawberry season this
year was a bit shorter and smaller than previously since frost got some
of the earliest flowers and then rain this week caused other berries to
rot. It's hard to complain, though, when we have over a gallon
each of strawberry leather and strawberry freezer jam to perk up our late winter doldrums next year.
The only newly-frozen
food that counts toward my goal of thirty-or-so gallons of stockpiled
vegetables is the broccoli --- nearly a gallon put away so far. We
didn't have enough broccoli to freeze last spring and our fall crop
bombed, so it's exciting to be able to gorge and still freeze quite a
few of the cruciferous buds.
Although rain rots the
strawberries, I was glad of a rainy afternoon since it let me work in
the kitchen without burning up. If it's too wet to be in the
garden, you can always spend that time preserving the bounty!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Hi Anna and Mark,
Broth from feet, etc. So what is your formula and how do you prepare feet, heads and other parts, please. What parts do you avoid. Why.
It is supposed to be very tasty. Never made it.
Also your comment on yellow fat in birds was VERY interesting. Do they taste better? More fat soluble vitamins, etc.?
warm regards to you both,
John
John ---- Here's my stock "recipe." (Although calling it a recipe instead of a method is rather bold of me since there's only one ingredient --- chicken.) You may also be interested in this post with tips from Harvey Ussery on which parts of the chicken to use and how to prepare feet.
That said, I can't get his feet-peeling method to work very well for me, so I just scrub ours very carefully and cook them for a long time. I figure any traces of problematic things left on the skin surface get killed after 5 hours of boiling....
Yellow fat happens with pastured birds, and since omega-3s also happen with pastured birds, I've always assumed the yellow color is linked to those good fats. I'm not positive, though, since I haven't researched it.
Is there a resource that you get your freezer containers from? I do not purchase enough deli stuff to get enough container and I love what you have. thanks, Luann
Do you two blanch your veggies before freezing? I froze homegrown green beans last year (blanched first), and found the texture awful once thawed and cooked. Just rubbery and squishy. Kinda like frozen and thawed fruit--never the same as fresh of course. But frozen and then cooked green beans from the store are so much better in texture than are my homey beans.
What's your experience with your frozen veggies?
(BTW, still absolutely loving your blogs. Been following nearly daily for almost two years--after binge reading over the course of a week to catch up to then-current day.)
Jen