Cooking and Preserving

Mashed Sweet Potatoes, Coleslaw, and Salmon with Mixed Herbs from the Garden

My dinners have been pretty plain. This is pretty standard at my house. My husband isn't into gourmet meals. And I tend to like my vegetables simple. My lunches tend to be more adventurous as I like a wide variety of things and I don't make lunch for my husband. Usually I'll make one dish a week for lunch and eat that and leftovers all week long. But this week I've basically been eating only leftovers for lunch.

Broccoli, Swiss Chard, Saffron Rice, Baked Chicken with Rosemary

The above meal was made because I needed the chickens and bones to make some pot pie innards. The celery had just been harvested and I wanted to freeze some of it in an easy to use way.

So I cooked way more than I needed. I was doing a double batch of my pot pie recipe. So I needed a lot of chicken. I ended up with 7 cups of chicken pulled off the bones - well after we ate dinner first.

And four and a half quarts of broth. I did use other bones for the broth too. Whenever I cook chicken I freeze the bones until I have enough to do a large batch of broth. I don't season my broth like most people do. Mine is basically plain when I make it. It will have some herbs that were stuck to the chicken. In this case it has rosemary and basil from two differently seasoned dinners. But I like it as plain as possible. In the final dishes I'll add all the flavorings I need. Two quarts were used for my pot pies and the rest was frozen for soups later.

I combined it with some fresh picked carrots and celery and some onions from my storage. The seasoning for this is sage from the garden.

And cooked it all down and pureed it. I puree it because my husband won't eat veggies. Well he will, but he hates the texture. So it gets pureed. Then the chicken is added. You will notice I no longer add potatoes. So sad. I miss them. But I freeze these up. There are two cups of pot pie insides in each one. I have a small casserole that perfectly fits these containers. My pot pies aren't made with pie crust. I put cheddar cheese biscuits on mine. So now all I need to do is defrost and make some biscuits for the top. I like to have some easy meals in my freezer.

The rest of the celery was chopped and frozen. I think I have more than enough for soups this year.

I was going to add the canning I've done for Thanksgiving, but I think I'll do that in another post as this one is long enough.