How to Cut Up A Whole Chicken

I like buying whole chickens for several reasons. They're usually cheaper per pound than trimmed chicken pieces. I've gotten leg quarters or half breasts with skin and bone for cheaper, but have you noticed they usually have big chunks of skin tucked underneath? I'm not sure how much weight that actually adds, but it feels sneaky to me. I think the thing that I like the most about this is that I can get the most possible use out of the whole chicken. The only thing I don't know what to do with is the skin. Any ideas?

There you have it! With some practice, we might be as fast as Yan someday!

A few notes:

• Save those giblets! If you aren't a giblet gravy person, your cat or dog will love you for them. I like to cut them up into treat sizes and flash freeze on a tray with wax or parchment paper. I have also heard that chicken liver makes good fish bait.
• Sorry about the pic for separating the leg quarter into drumstick and thigh. I somehow missed that one! You can see the line of fat in the picture I used for now. I'll update this post the next time I cut up a chicken.
• A post on making chicken stock with the lovely chicken carcass is forthcoming. :)

Please share your favorite ways to prepare chicken! Do you have any special tricks to make it extra delicious?

Update: Lasagna Garden and Compost Heap

Well, it isn't much to look at just yet, but here is the progress I have made on my lasagna garden. I started out by chopping down the biggest weeds (some of them literally required a saw... ). Then I trampled the rest down as much as I could. 

A rainbow of grasshoppers went flying in every direction from the tall grass when I sprayed it down! First time I've ever seen a pink one. That was really neat. However, a friend of mine taught me that grasshoppers can be very destructive to a garden, so I'm glad that there seem to be fewer each day. 

Next step: papier mâ ché the ground with pages torn from an old phone book and spray it with water to keep them from flying everywhere. I scattered a thin layer of grass clippings on top of that for the "green" layer and then a few inches of straw on top of that for the "brown" layer. 

 

I covered about a third of my garden with one phone book

I plan to build it up layer by layer as we generate more materials. Mostly, it will consist of layers of grass clippings and shredded paper, since we have an abundant source of junk mail delivered to our house on the regular. :) Shredded newspaper, grocery ads, and credit card offers make great compost! Just be sure to rip out the little plastic windows first and avoid glossy things like magazines since some of their inks contain heavy metals that you won't want your future veggies soaking up. 

I started a compost in the other corner on the same day, and it's coming along nicely. It amazes me how much we used to throw away that we can put in that compost heap! I got it started with a small pile of about 1/3 grass clippings and weeds and 2/3 straw, and I'm trying to keep that ratio of greens to browns. Maintaining it only takes a few minutes to make sure it's as damp as a wrung out sponge and mix it up with a shovel.

Just added that cardboard in back today to keep the pooch from pulling straw through the fence. She thought that was a great game!

Since then, we've started keeping a labelled container in our fridge for scraps. The cold keeps things from getting smelly, and I only have to go mix it into the compost heap every day or two. Here are some examples of what we have been composting so far:

What you can and cannot compost seems to be a matter of debate. I've read a number of lists and some say you can compost anything organic up to roadkill (blech). Buuuut I haven't been able to generate a lot of heat with my compost heap yet. I'm guessing that's because it is small and not contained. So, although I have seen things begin to break down in the few weeks that I've been doing this, it's not as quick of a process as it could be. I'm going to stick to the safer stuff, which means no meat or dairy products.

Oh yeah, and remember the chicken wire I put down to dogproof the garden? It's working... but she's not giving up!

Right at the edge of the chicken wire... Yep. She's getting a snootful of cayenne next time.

What do you guys think? I'm new to composting, so I I'd love to get advice from my more experienced readers. And if you're new to this, too, I hope we can learn from each other's successes and mistakes as we go!

Chicken + Ham = Chickham?

My favorite fella likes to tease me about how specific my food cravings can be sometimes. But I use it to my advantage when it comes to meal planning! When the billboard for the new Wendy's pretzel burger was making my mouth water, I got some pretzel buns and made my own! (Not to mention, taking the time to make extra burger patties to freeze for easier prep next time.)

Anyway, I've been craving colcannon for the past couple of weeks. It's an Irish dish I discovered a few years back that boils down to (ha! I'm keeping that!) mashed potatoes with shredded cabbage. It goes really well with salty, cured meats like ham, bacon and corned beef (mmmmm). 

However, I'm not buying a lot of those pricier meats until I get my credit cards paid off. Time for some creative internet searching...

Enter torihamu!

Thank you, Japan!

I took my first crack at it, and it's quite good! This article at JustBento.com explains the process much more thoroughly, but, basically, you brine the chicken breasts in a mix of honey and salt in the refrigerator for two days. You can also add seasonings of your choice (I used a bit of garlic and clove to make it more ham-ish.) Then you rinse it really well, and steam or bake it at a low temperature. I went with baking, since the author of the article liked it best and seemed to know what she* was talking about. 

It ends up with a texture very like country ham! It got a big stamp of approval from my guy, so I can definitely see this being repeated, and it complimented the colcannon nicely!

 

 

Maybe this blog will force me to learn how to take nice photos someday

P. S. I made colcannon with red cabbage, since someone nabbed the entire crate of green while I was wandering the produce section. It tastes the same, and looks like purple Easter grass! Kinda fun. :)

*Please correct my pronoun if need be, maki!

Milk Jug Watering Can

What a wonderful idea from A Journey to Dream! I had thought to turn an empty milk carton into a watering can by cutting the top. Before getting started, I did a quick search to see if someone had come up with a better method than what I had in mind, and look what I found!

Please visit her blog for instructions on making this very simple recycled milk jug watering can. 

I made my own using a pin, but I think I'll have to dig up a nail or a larger needle to make the holes wider, because I'm not getting water flow as good as hers is in the picture.

What are some creative ways you have recycled common household items in the garden? 

Guiltless Freezing

I just recently discovered that freezer bags are recyclable! I have yet to try it, but it sounds like you can turn clean and dry freezer bags in at grocery stores that recycle plastic shopping bags. 

Washing them can be done inside out in a dishwasher, or by hand. We aren't lucky enough to have a dishwasher in this house, but it's only a matter of seconds to squish some soapy water around in it and hang it in my drying rack on a spatula.

I was looking into alternatives for freezer meal containers that are better for the environment. There are some affordable options out there...

For example:

Wide mouth mason jars

Freezer paper

Plastic freezer containers 

 Plastic wrap and aluminum foil

...but I still feel that zippered freezer bags are the most flexible for most freezer meal applications. They allow you to reduce freezer burn by pushing out air, and can be stacked neatly and tightly together if frozen flat. 

However, I am hardly ever able to reuse them. They develop pinholes and leak when defrosting, get contaminated with raw meat, or sometimes I just get impatient and rip them open to defrost things (like soup stock) in a pan. Now I don't have to feel as wasteful because I can take them in to be recycled!

Ziploc even has a rewards program, which you can check out here (no, I'm not affiliated with them in any way):

I'm still interested in getting some reusable freezer containers eventually. What are your favorite ways to store your freezer meals?

Freezer Meals 1

So, I mentioned a while back that I'm in freezer cooking mode, right? I loooove the idea of Once a Month Cooking (OAMC) which has been a big deal in the circles I frequent on the internet (*cough*Pinterest*cough*) lately. However, I haven't quite leveled up to the point of making 50 meals in 2 hours, or whatever these amazing women do.

Instead, when I sit down to do my weekly meal planning/grocery list composing, I try to make one or two of those meal ideas something freezable. Then I just make double or triple and freeze the extra. It hardly takes more time than cooking the meal in the first place, and having those meals ready to go has been helping us quash the urges to eat out on those lazy nights.

Here are a few of the things we have frozen lately:

	Sausage and Jalapeno Chili I've made a few tweaks to this recipe to suit our taste. I leave out the ground beef and use 1 lb beef kielbasa, sliced into about 1/4" thick semi circles. I change out crushed tomatoes for diced. I cut the brown sugar in half. And I add 2C cooked kidney beans at the end (about a can). Defrost in the fridge and serve with warm corn bread. Mmm.
	Indian Chicken Curry This is my favorite fella's specialty. He also dices the chicken, adds diced potato and carrot, and uses tomato sauce in place of stewed tomatoes. Serve over rice, and feel free to add extra veggies (zucchini is good).
	Chicken Enchiladas There are tons of recipes for enchiladas out there. Mine are pretty basic chicken with (usually) canned green sauce. I bought a few cheap 8x8 metal pans for freezing stuff that can go straight into the oven. Just prep, line with plastic wrap and then foil, and write the baking instructions on the foil. No need to thaw (just make sure you remove the plastic), and I like that they aren't disposable.
	Poverty Meal This one made me laugh because my family ate it all the time when I was a kid, but I never had a name for it. Pretty appropriate! I "fancied it up" a bit by using rotini instead of macaroni.
	Spaghetti Sauce This chunky, vegetarian spaghetti sauce is so easy to double or triple and freeze. The only change I had to make (to make my fella happy) was to shred the carrots so they weren't as noticeable. I have also been experimenting with adding hot Italian sausage seasonings, such as garlic, fennel, and red pepper flakes. I'll post a recipe if I ever figure out the best measurements. :)
	Soup Stock It's soooo easy to make and freeze your own broth. I've used this vegetable soup stock recipe a few times, but it's really as simple as learning what you like in broth, cleaning and rough-chopping the veggies, chucking it all into a soup pot with herbs and seasonings, covering with water, and simmering for a few hours. Strain out the solids, and you have broth! I save bones from roast chicken and meat in my freezer for when I have an afternoon at home to keep an eye on the stove. You can also add (clean) eggshells to add calcium.

Do you have any favorite freezer recipes? I'm always on the lookout for new healthy and tasty recipes. Please share!

Dog-Proofing and Lasagna Gardening

My Dog Likes to Garden

When I first started this blog, my intention was to chronicle my attempts to learn to garden. Then we got a puppy. 

A puppy who liked to dig. 

What dirt?

She dug under the wire fence I had so carefully built around my new garden, and trampled and gnawed every last plant. Needless to say, I was pretty discouraged at that point. Fast forward to two years later... I've been daydreaming of having a garden, but there were a couple of obstacles keeping me from starting. The first was still the dog. I filled in her holes, but the lure of that mysterious, off-limits place was too much for her, and she'd just dig them right up again. 

Finally it occurred to me to dig-proof the base of the garden fence the same way I had the fence at the back of the yard. I bought a cheap roll of foot-wide chicken wire and some long metal stakes with hooks on one end from the local hardware store. 

Chicken Wire and Wire Stakes

I rolled the chicken wire out flat along the base of my garden fence and staked it down. Then, after she still managed to dig between the fence and the chicken wire the next day (gah!), I filled the dirt back in and used some more wire to tie the near edge of the chicken wire to the base of the garden fence. It's been several months and, as far as I know, the garden area has remained untouched by canine paw. 

Taming My Jungle

Next roadblock... weeds that are taller than I am. And yes, that leafy thing to the far left is a tree. Did you know trees could be weeds? I sure didn't! 

And this is after I spent an hour hacking at it earlier this week

I've put off starting a garden so far this summer because of the immense amount of work I imagined it would take to pull up all those weeds and turn over all of that heavy soil. I don't know why I didn't think of searching the web for an easier way to prep a garden bed before, but I'm sure glad I finally did! 

I came across something called Lasagna Gardening. It requires no digging and sounds just about my speed. Start out by chopping or ripping out the biggest weeds. Then, put down a layer of newspaper (I'm going to use phone book pages, since we have several of those laying around that I haven't quite gotten to recycling). The paper kills the remaining weeds and prevents new ones from sprouting up by blocking out the sun. Plus, it is biodegradable. And, my favorite, free! Then, you put down layers of "green" and "brown" plant clippings and vegetable scraps to form a compost lasagna. 

Depending on what time of year you start your lasagna garden, you can plant your seeds right in it or let it break down into fluffy, nutrient-rich soil for a few months first. My first attempt at a compost heap did not go so well, so I will leave the details to the experts. Here is the website that explained it to me. 

Have you ever tried lasagna gardening? What do you do to make gardening less work and more fun?