One thing that's always in my freezer

Once again, I've taken a little blogging vacay. Did you even notice? I'm going to pretend you did so I can feel special.

I did want to take a second to share with you a tip, one that you may or may not have ever heard about. Allow me to introduce you to my favorite Publix low-fat cottage cheese container:

Nope... there's no cottage cheese in there. If there was, you'd see a red container because I'm a loyal Breakstones cottage cheese fan. The rest of the cottage cheese out there is useless, in my humble opinion.

So what's in there??

Shocker!

Whenever I chop up vegetables, I will rinse of and save the peels, stalks, or leaves. This includes onions, carrots, broccoli, celery, etc. etc. I store these scraps in my handy plastic container and pop it in my freezer door next to my ungodly stockpile of frozen bananas.

These scraps make great, healthy snacks! Just kidding :) If I ever buy bone-in split chicken breasts and have already cut the meat off OR if I  have pulled all the meat off of one of those yummy deli rotisserie chickens, I just throw the following into my crock pot:

• chicken bones with whatever meat is left on them (cooked or raw)
• veggie scraps
• water to cover
• little salt and whatever herbs I want (usually stick with garlic, oregano, basil)
• a splash of white vinegar (this helps draw the calcium out of the bones and into your stock)

Let it go on low while you're at work or cook on high for a few hours and badda bing badda boom, you've got yourself some practically FREE chicken stock! I love knowing that my stock is not filled to the brim with sodium and preservatives. I pretty much always have some of this homemade stock in my freezer. It's great for soups! Also, I use it in place of water when boiling rice, pasta, or quinoa to make it more flavorful.

And just as a reference, the bones/leftover meat from one rotisserie chicken (after using the meat for two meals) and one container worth of veggie scraps made 9 cups worth of stock. Oh, and if you freeze anything in a ziploc bag, be sure to freeze it flat. Makes for MUCH easier storage.

Tasty Tuesday

What I Whipped Up Wednesday