On today’s Sustainable Sunday, we’re cooking up batches of chicken stock to keep on hand as the cold weather settles in (we usually freeze it). Nothing could be better than a steaming bowl of hot chicken soup to keep warm on a winter’s day!
‘Stocking’ up the freezer
If you’re looking for a way to cut down on energy usage, a pressure cooker is the way to go!
The other night I was watching Shark Tank on TV and someone was pitching a dessert hummus in flavours such as brownie batter, choc-o-mint, vanilla bean, snickerdoodle and chocolate chip cookie batter. Wow; I didn’t even know dessert hummus existed! Hubs and I are huge consumers of regular hummus so dessert hummus sounded like something I had to try.
All the sharks were raving about it, so the next day I went online to find it, only to discover that it’s not even available for sale in Canada. Not a problem when you love to cook; I decided to whip some up at home!
I haven’t had apples for ages, but I just started a new diet to lose some weight so fudgy brownie batter dessert hummus was going to be a great accompaniment to my daily snack. And let’s face it, who’s going to stick to a diet unless there’s tasty snacks, right?
The process of fermenting food produces beneficial probiotics that are linked to many health benefits including improvements in immune, cognitive, digestive and endocrine function. When renowned natural health physician Dr. Joseph Marcola had homemade sauerkraut analyzed in a lab he found it had trillions of good bacteria. It equated to two ounces of home fermented sauerkraut having more probiotics than a bottle of 100 probiotic capsules – wow!
My all-time favourite sandwich is a Reuben, loaded up with melted swiss cheese and sauerkraut. My husband loves sauerkraut on hotdogs so we go through a LOT of it! We thought it would be fun to make our own sauerkraut and share the process.
Since posting my chicken soup recipe last month, we’ve been inspired to explore cooking techniques that we’ve never tried. I’m going to occasionally post these culinary learnings here on Birdz of a Feather under a category I’m calling ‘The Unknown Chef’ (I’ve even created a new banner that you’ll see whenever you’re in the recipe category).
The Unknown Chef has always been my husband’s moniker; he coined it after graduating from culinary school many years ago when he was thinking about changing careers. The career change never happened, but I guess that’s only fitting because he’s still The Unknown Chef – lol. I hope our DIY culinary adventures are of interest to you too (everyone has to eat, right?).
There’s nothing more delicious than rotisserie barbecue chicken, but up until now we’ve never attempted it.
Today, for the first time, I’m posting a recipe to my blog! It’s one that’s near and dear to my heart. I grew up watching my grandmother make chicken soup every week but sadly I didn’t attempt to make it myself until after she was gone. What I wouldn’t give now to ask her a few questions about all her ‘recipes’! The fact is though, my grandmother never wrote down a recipe; she cooked by intuition; a little bit of this and a little bit of that.
