And so... it begins

So the family and I have officially begun our 30 day primal/paleo challenge. I have been eating mostly primal/paleo for a few weeks but last Thursday we decided to go off the reservation in the name of "live it up" before we begin our plan. By the weekend we were so looking forward to the beginning of our 30 day challenge and so sick and tired of yucky food. I tried to make mental notes of all the side effects and symptoms. Headache, acne, a general fogginess of mind, not to mention the over all yuck feeling.

I tried to be a good convert and cleaned out all the cabinets, fridge and freezer. Everything is bagged up on the floor of the kitchen ready to be delivered to a friend of mine who can use all our expensive gluten free foods (that contain rice and soy which we will no longer eat). I need to haul those on out of here.


So here is our bare cabinet after I trashed or donated everything from inside. (By the way! It is amazing to see how many canned goods you owe which are actually expired. lol)  Reminds me of Old Mother Hubbard ... that poor dog wouldn't get a bone out of our cabinet either.  HA!

So the family and head headed off to the grocery store in search of lots of goodies to fill our cabinet, fridge and freezer with.  We are trying to buy as much organic as possible, trying to get uncured meats and grass-fed beef, etc.  We are still in the balancing stages of determining which things we really should not compromise on and which things we can work with.  Between the expense and availability of some items, we are still tweaking what to get, where and when.


Here is a picture of a few of the goodies from our hunting and gathering expedition.  I spent the evening washing, bagging and prepping what food items I could.  We didn't go shopping until late sunday afternoon/evening so I didn't get to pre-cook meals like I had hoped, but we were in this together so I knew we could make it work.



We are also still in the process of determining how much food 3 people will eat throughout the course of a week.  We don't want to over buy and have fruits/veggies go bad before we're able to eat them but we are also finding that it's only Wednesday and we already need to restock most everything! HA!  Guess it will be a process that we will figure out as we go.  Right now I'm thinking... More is more! (instead of less is more).


So we also decided to break down and get a Sam's club membership.  I'd heard that they had good deals on nuts, olive oil frozen organic veggies and even meat sometimes.  We spent yesterday afternoon roaming about the store and did get some almonds, a big ole jug of extra virgin olive oil, some avocados, some larabars, some liters of water and I think that might be it.  I discovered that our now empty pantry might just be a good place to store veggies that don't have to be refrigerated... as long as I don't forget they are in there and let them go to waste. So here's what the cabinet looks like now.



I've got some green beans which I saved from the initial cleaning out of the cabinets.  We might try them after our 30 days is up since I hear they can be controversial and we are doing our best to stay true to our 30 day commitment.


I've attempted a few things that I've seen or read about... I think I got a little overly ambitious our very first night, we got home a little later than planned but I already had my menu in mind so instead of realizing that it was late and my family was hungry, I just jumped right in and got to cookin.  So I saw this recipe posted by CaveMomma http://cavemomma.com/2011/07/31/sarah-jane-fried-chicken/ and thought oh that sounds pretty good and simple enough. So I put some coconut oil in the pan and got to work on my chicken, walnuts and egg.   Unfortunately about half way through the process I think I realized the family was hungry and I believe I might have been rushing things along cooking over to high a flame since some of the goodness got a bit burnt.  





I honestly felt like our first paleo dinner was a complete and total failure, but then again I have huge expectations for myself almost all the time.  The family ate, no one hit a drive thru and now that is has been a couple of days I realize that in and of itself means we had a successful first day.


Last night we had a much more successful experiment, I took our longhorn grass-fed beef and made meatloaf in the muffin tin.  I was trying to figure out what to use instead of crackers. I knew I could use egg and seasoning, I've had meat loaf without tomato sauce so I wasn't worried about that.  We had some carrots so I thought I'd make 1/2 the batch with shredded carrots and the other 1/2 just meat, eggs and seasoning.   To my surprise, both were very good and the whole family seemed to enjoy the carrot ones so we have claimed those as a WIN!


I actually ended up making another batch tonight for easy grab and go lunches or in a hurry dinners.  YAY! I felt redeemed!


Our daughter was trying to help me come up with a side item since all we really had was lettuce and spinach and we just had that the night before.  We knew we also had apples so she sat down with our Everyday Paleo book http://everydaypaleo.com/ and started looking up every recipe that had apple.  She came across a lovely little apple flower type thing that we decided would make a beautiful dessert.  So here is her creation thanks to the recipe in the book.  The recipe called for almond butter, blueberries and a raspberry, we had cashew butter, blackberries and a strawberry... it came out super yummy! We all enjoyed it very much!  My favorite part was getting our daughter involved, we've been in such a hurry that I haven't had as much time as I would like to include her in the making of meals, hopefully we can spend more time on the weekends doing that soon.


That gets you started on where we are so far this week.  I definitely have alot more to say and need to blog a few things off my chest about tonight's meal, but alas it is almost 11pm and with our 6am wake-up I don't want to cut my sleep time short since I have read and know how important that is too.  So I will say... more to come :)

Cave Transformation

So tonight I undertook "Cave" transformation... or shall I say creating caves. I went out to the store to buy some black out curtains for our room and our daughters room. I had done some online searches and saw that Walmart, Target and Anna's Linens carried them. Since we have a Walmart here in town I thought I'd check there first. Needless to say I was super pleased to find black curtains which will match the one set that already does a great job of "blacking-out" in our room and even found the exact number of panels in "Eclipse Kids" in a lovely purple color for our daughters room. I thought I was going to have to get two sets for her room a plain white black out set and some pretty pink or purple set so she wouldn't necessarily catch on to my blacking out her room plans. I came home and proceeded to begin installing said black-out curtains (forgot to mention the curtain rods I also purchased)

It was super tempting to just screw the mounts into the wall, I always hate drilling the holes putting the little plastic do-hickey's in, then screwing in the mounts, but I wanted to do it right since I imaged the blackout curtains were probably pretty weighty and we had two panels per rod since our windows are something like 77 inches across in each bedroom. I did it the long, strenuous, "Right" way all by myself. At one point I was getting super frustrated and somewhat tired from the manual screwing (stupid brackets didn't really allow enough room for the power tool to get in there and do the job) then I just sort of channeled my inner momma bear and grunted and got it done. It sure felt good to go into each room, turn off the lights and take inventory of any other sources of light.

We had given our daughter an alarm clock several months back, not because she needs it to wake up with, but instead because sometimes she wakes up entirely too early!! (especially on the weekends) It is really amazing how bright everything else becomes when your room is pitch black. So I unplugged her clock and took it out of her room completely and she also had a little CD player/radio that had a red display light which quickly lit up the whole room... unplugged that too. She's been at her mom's for the last couple of weeks for summer vacation... so my plan was to have her blackout curtains up when she returned, in hopes that maybe she won't so much notice the pitch black darkness of her room, but more just the normal adjustment period of getting use to your room again when you've been sleeping elsewhere for a couple of weeks. One thing that I really noticed when I tested out the darkness... she's got glow in the dark stars and paint all over her ceiling and BOY HOWDY!! Those stars glow BRIGHT when you first turn off the lights. Hopefully that will give her enough light to feel comfortable and fall asleep.

I can't wait to test out our room tonight. I mean I am a professional sleeper as it is... I am out like a light about 2 minutes (or less) of my head hitting the pillow, but I do get up several times a night to go potty. I read somewhere that often times it's not really that we need to get up so much as something else wakes us and then we get up. I noticed that our neighbors security light goes off right outside our window probably hundreds of times a night, it picks up when a car drives down the street so its on again, off again constantly. I am hoping that the addition of these black out curtains will eliminate any sleep disturbance created by that security light. My hubby is a much lighter sleeper, so I am also hopeful that the blackout curtains will bring him a full, peaceful, deep, restful nights sleep.

Cave no. 1 and Cave no. 2 are ready and waiting. The next step in our primal/paleo lifestyle is complete. :)

Portable Primal Breakfast

So I've been searching the internet and brainstorming for portable paleo/primal breakfasts. My husband needs to be able to nuke and run and once school starts the wee-one needs a warm and go meal too. I have been getting up and frying myself a couple of eggs each morning, it doesn't take long and gives me a nice protein enhanced boost to my day, but they probably don't think running eggs in the morning is a good thing. So I saw this wonderful idea out in cyberspace world where someone took muffin tins, put a tomato in the bottom, bacon around the sides and an egg in each one. Well we are tomato people so I thought, why not try the same thing but with sausage in the bottom instead.


So I cut the Jimmy Dean All-Natural  Sausage my husband normally eats on an english muffin and put the patties into the bottom of a muffin tin.  I put those into the oven at about 350 degrees for a while.  Once the sausage started to cook, I pulled them back out of the oven and tried to line the edges with bacon.  We have a really old muffin tin that isn't very deep, so I ended up taking the sausage patties out of the tin and putting the bacon around the edges of the tin and then slipped the sausage back into the bottom of the tin, inside the bacon wrapped edges.  I put these back into the oven for a while.

I then cracked three eggs into a measuring cup (for easy pouring) and put some coconut milk in with the eggs.  Hubby likes his eggs fluffy if he's going to eat them so I wanted to make them good in hopes he would enjoy my creation.  I added some salt and some pepper and stirred up the egg mixture.   I pulled the bacon and sausage out of the oven, at this point they were mostly cooked.  I then carefully poured the "scrambled" eggs into the muffin tin.


While the eggs, bacon and sausage were cooking in the oven, I hopped into the shower and dressed for work.  When I came back I moved them up to the top rack and broiled them just for a few minutes to get them a nice yummy golden brown on the tops.



Aren't they super duper yummy looking.

To make them easy grab and go I put each one in a small Tupperware container so that each morning we could just grab one out and microwave it.  I think I might also try cupcake holders so that we could just store them all in ziplock bags, grab one out, microwave it on a paper towel and head out the door.  Less room in the fridge and less dishes to wash.

Pitty Pat... Paleo

I'm guessing most folks probably don't consider their footwear as part of their lifestyle change... I however have considered mine as part of the changes I'm making. As I was reading Mark Sisson's "Primal Blueprint" alot of what he was saying about training and being active barefooted made alot of sense to me. If this whole process is getting back in touch with the way we were designed to function, then I could totally see his point about how training barefooted allows and requires your muscles to work together in different ways than they do when you have the support and stance provided by wearing shoes of different sorts.

I've been running 5K's since August 2010 and in that time I have seen runners in their "five fingers" I always thought they were the strangest thing until I started understanding why. I shared some of my findings with my husband and he actually did alot more research about the Vibram five fingers. I was given some cash for my birthday and wanted something tangible to purchase as a "gift" else I would probably by guys and groceries with my "birthday money" so we went to REI and I purchased a pair of Vibram five fingers. These little babies are apparently increasing in popularity and are fairly hard to find in sizes. I lucked out and got mine first try, but we did a bit more shopping about to find some for my husband.


We are both proudly "Five Finger Freaks" now... (my term) It is amazing how much we have already noticed about how our feet prefer the "bare-footed-ness" of their design. We often comment about how unnatural and/or uncomfortable our feet are now in work shoes and other shoes.

I have not yet worked my way up to running in my five fingers, which is the reason I bought them.  They say you really have to work your way up to your normal distance so I've just been wearing them as often as possible and doing Zumba in them.   They say you should run 10% of your normal distance for the first two weeks then increase by 10% every two weeks there after.  I'm hoping to run in them at my next big 5K event in September so I better start running in them soon.  I hear alot of folks say they actually run faster in their five fingers.  It will be interesting to see how they perform for running.  I very much enjoy them thus far.

If you'd like to learn more, check out their FAQ at http://www.vibramfivefingers.com/faq/barefoot_running_faq.htm

Soaking my nuts...

Got your attention? hahaha

Yes indeed! I have started soaking my nuts!

So if you've read some previous entries you know the spark that finally lit my fire was terrible abdominal pain caused by gut damage and MSG exposures. So here I've been trying to eat clean, no more peanuts or peanut products, no more grains or soy, really trying to eat clean and start incorporating alot of primal/paleo eating ideals into my day to day life. Well I would notice I was still getting some abdominal discomfort after eating almonds. I bought raw almonds and still, bit of discomfort. I went back and read some emails from my friend and dear advisor and sure enough one of her old "gut damage" healing protocol emails suggested not eating nuts unless they had been soaked 4 to 6 hours. I did some reading and discovered that folks "soak their nuts" before eating them. I thought well what in the world is that for? I had a million questions, could you soak them ahead of time? did you have to soak them just before eating them? did they get mushy and soft? what was all this nut soaking about.

Then I came across this site http://www.thenourishinggourmet.com/2008/07/soaking-nuts.html and learned that you soak your nuts to weaken the enzyme inhibitors built into the nut which can cause digestive issues for those like me with gut damage. Apparently soaking the nuts can also help release beneficial enzymes. I figured what the heck, it's worth a shot.


So I purchased a package of raw almonds and put them in a mason jar filled with warm sea salt water (note here... don't use a mason jar... when the almonds swell the tapered top makes it a pain in the bootay to get the nuts out) I left the almonds to soak overnight, then emptied the jar into a strainer (with the help of a butter knife..lol) and rinsed the almonds, removing any lose skins that came off during the soaking process.


I then spread the almonds on a cookie sheet and placed them into the oven to dry. The lowest setting on my oven is 170 so just slightly above the recommended 150 degrees. We just might have to invest in a dehydrator.

I don't like to leave the oven on when we're sleeping or not home since we have a gas oven, so I dried the almonds in the oven until bedtime last night, then again this morning when we woke up, then after we returned from the farmer's market, on through the afternoon.


I ended up taking the almonds out of oven around mid-day because I was planning to roast a chicken to use for more bone broth so I decided to package the almonds in ziplock bags.  It was about this time I got the great idea to get creative.  I decided to put a little bit of olive oil in each bag with different seasonings and invited my husband to get in on the creative fun.  We came up with Southwest Chipotle Seasoning (Mrs. Dash), Dill weed, Cinnamon, Chili Powder and one batch of plain.  We put the seasoning into the bags and then massaged the seasoning and oil around all the almonds.  Once the oven had cooled from the chicken roasting, I created little dividers in the foil and returned the almonds to the oven for a couple more hours.

Once they were done drying and cooling I put them back into the zip lock bags and put those labeled zip locks into the freezer (since its my first time soaking and drying nuts I want to be sure that they don't have the chance to mold if I missed any moisture)  I am very excited about the different flavor possibilities and look forward to getting creative with our daughter and seeing what sort of flavor combinations she comes up with too.

Plus it's alot of fun to say "I'm soaking my nuts" :)   Enjoy

Snacks

So snacks are probably going to be a big part of our primal/paleo lifestyle. We are all pretty use to eating 6 small meals a day and while I know primal/paleo eating says to eat when you're hungry.. I have a feeling that we will continue to be healthy snackers. So I'm always keeping an eye out of snack ideas/options. Here are a few that we've tried so far. (Some of these end up being meals - ie: smoothies)

SMOOTHIES


Last weekend I had some spinach that I really needed to find a way to use. I purchased it with the intention of using it in salads, but with my abdominal discomfort I was trying not to eat raw veggies last week. My friend told me that blending them up should break down alot of the cell walls and prevent stomach pains from having them so I thought I'd make some fruit smoothies.

I secretly hoped my family might be feeling a little adventurous and try it too, but alas they voted for the more traditional fruit only version. haha

We blended banana, strawberry, spinach, vanilla coconut milk and ice to make some yummy fruitie smoothies.  They were very tasty and filling.  Our daughter couldn't even finish hers but did give it rave reviews (sans spinach).

Later in the week I also made a "Green Meanie" using the last banana, unsweetened kefir (not paleo but part of my gut healing plan) and spinach.  It was a light green color and tasted sort of like banana and yogurt.  It was pretty good and super filling.

Friday I made a blackberry and kefir smoothie which was very good except all the little blackberry seeds settled to the bottom and kept coming up my straw. Blackberries may not be the best smoothie fruit.  Might have to stick to eating those whole. haha!

KALE CHIPS

So I finally found Kale at the store week before last and last weekend finally got to try making Kale chips for the first time.  I found a video recipe on Mark's Daily Apple so I went about making Kale chips.  You take Kale, wash it really well, dry it well, then tear it into bite size (chip size) pieces.  You then coat it with a tbsp of olive oil, sea salt and whatever flavoring you like.  So I made that batch and it end up being SUPER salty.  Guess I got carried away with the Sea Salt, but the taste and texture wasn't bad so I thought I'd make up another batch this weekend.

 
Step 1:  Break the kale off the bunch and wash the leaves well.  Make sure you really wash the kale well. If you are buying organic there are lots of little nooks and crannies.  If you are buying non-organic there is alot of room for pesticides etc on the leaves.  Scrub a dub those leaves as best you can.  I usually lay a couple of dish towels out on the counter and put the leaves face down on the towel to dry.  I will come back with another towel and pat them dry if I'm in a hurry, otherwise you could just leave them laying out for a while to air dry.


Step 2:  Once your Kale is washed and dried, you can begin pulling the leaves off the stems of the Kale plant.  They say to just tear it in chip size pieces with your hands.  I made two separate bowls out of my bushel of Kale so that I could try experimenting with a couple of different flavors.

Once you've gotten all the leafy parts off the plant you can add 1-2 tbsp olive oil to the bowl and massage it into the kale with your hands.  I used less sea salt this time since last time I over salted.  One batch I added lemon pepper seasoning to and the other batch I added chipotle seasoning (note: WAY to much chipoltle seasoning this time.. eekk)

Step 3:  Lay the leaves of Kale out on a cookie sheet (I like to cover mine with foil for easy clean up). You want the leaves to be laid out on the sheet so that each one can dry out.  I found it best if they aren't touching (I got lazy and put a bunch on one cookie sheet which just meant that it took forever for them to dry)

Step 4:  Put into a low temp oven to dry.  The video recipe said 200 degrees for something like 12 minutes.  I think she has a tiny oven because mine did better in a little bit higher temp over.  The low temp oven works fine, it just takes alot longer.  Check them after a while and short of shift them around, if the edges are still soft they need to dry longer.  They will be stiff and crispy when they are ready to come out.

Step 5:  Leave them to cool for a while on the cookie sheet.  Then you can enjoy them as a snack or I have found that you can keep them in a zip lock bag (left open) for a couple of days. They won't be as crispy as they are straight off the cookie sheet but it works well if you need some snack options throughout the week with no pre-time.







NUTS

The other night I thought I'd try soaking some cashews for a few hours and then drying them in the oven.  Well I think they mean to soak your raw nuts because when I soaked my roasted cashews, they got really soft.  So I put them in the oven to dry them for a few hours.  They never really did crisp up, either because they were already roasted or because I didn't leave them in the oven to dry long enough.  I wanted to snack on them.  Toward the end of the drying time in the oven I sprinkled some chipotle seasoning on the cashews.  That was pretty tasty.

(aside:  I occasionally have a square of 88% dark chocolate which I don't think is paleo but I read about it often on other blogs and sites so I've been incorporating it sparingly)


So when the nuts came out of the oven, I didn't want to wait for them to cool down or anything, I put them on to a paper-towel and decided to just throw a square of chocolate on top.  Chocolate and nuts, sounded like a pretty good treat to me.  Well by the time I carried my snack into the other room, the chocolate was an ewie gooey wonderful mess! haha! There was nothing civilized about it, but it was tasty.  There was to much to eat in one sitting so I got the idea that maybe I would take the rest of it and put it into the freezer, creating this yummy nutty chocolate treat.  So I put the leftovers in a plastic tupperware and put it in the fridge.  The next night I did indeed enjoy a very tasty cold chocolaty nutty salty/sweet treat. YUM!

More nuts... (I'm nuts for nuts)  see next blog

In the Beginning

So I'd been researching and learning more about primal/paleo eating plans while following the transition plan for Medifast which adds one food item per week (ie: veggies one week, fruit another, etc)  I still wasn't 100% anything since occasionally I would have off plan foods/treats, but knowing that I was transitioning off of this "all or nothing" plan allowed me to just adjust my daily intake accordingly instead of just going hog wild off the deep end and eat anything and everything in sight.  One night my husband and I decided we were going to grab some Chik fil a for dinner, so I logged my food into my daily calorie tracker and decided that I would have a Chicken sandwich, I made other adjustments through the day and was at peace with my planned choice and my total calories/carbs for the day.  That evening I started having horrible stomach pains, I couldn't figure out what in the world was wrong with my stomach.  I was couldn't go to sleep until about midnight because my stomach was hurting and burning and then woke up again about 12:30 in pain again.  I decided to go soak in the bathtub since I wasn't sleeping anyway.  I started reading Robb Wolf's "The Paleo Solution" and stayed awake in pain until about 3am when I remembered I had some crystallized ginger from before I had my gall bladder removed, the only thing that seemed to help with stomach cramping back then.  I ate a few chunks and finally got to sleep.

The next day I emailed my friend and said I needed to know everything I could to do heal gut damage, that I needed to start taking my stomach pains seriously because it was obvious that there was something wrong with my stomach since I was hurting after meals so frequently.  She had previously told me about the wonders of "bone broth" but I had never heard of gut damage and really didn't think I had anything like that.  After my all night stomach pain and chest cavity burning, etc I knew that it was definitely time to start doing what I could on my own.  She sent me several links to bone broth recipes previously and that day I printed everything I could find.  I really thought that all my pain must have been from the peanut oil Chik fil a uses to fry their chicken.  I had only recently heard that peanuts and peanut oils can contribute to "leaky gut" which was another thing I had never heard of and obviously in denial about possibly having.  She also told me that Chik Fil A was a big MSG user, I started looking up ingredients online and even called the store... sure enough... MSG!  The really disturbing part is that my husband I and were on their site the day before reviewing their allergen page and thinking how awesome it was they were so up front about their allergens (because of our daughter's eating plan and sensitivities) I guess MSG isn't classified as an allergen because it wasn't until I went and read the actual ingredients that I saw the offender.  Hot doggit! I had been MSG'ed again.  I started getting really mad at our food industry... if these additions to our food were making me hurt so badly, what in the world was it doing deep down inside my body? Worse yet, what is it doing to our children?  So this anger pushed me a little further down this road to start living primal/paleo.


That night I went to the store and made a few purchases toward my primal/paleo lifestyle.  Now please forgive me since I am still in the learning stages, I am going to make mistakes and get the wrong products occasionally, but instead of putting any sort of "pressure to be perfect" on myself I'm taking this as a learning process and each new thing I learn moves me closer and closer to that primal/paleo lifestyle I hope to live someday.    I knew ginger could help my stomach pains too and my friend suggested making tea from ginger root, lemon and honey.  The other items are just things that I've read about and wanted to start building up my cabinet supply a few items at a time so it wouldn't be so expensive to begin all at once.


My plan was to start with some bone broth, since it takes a good 24 hours to cook down and pull the healing properties of the marrow out of the bones, I wanted to get that started sooner than later so that I could start the healing process.  Since it was Thursday night I didn't want to roast my own chicken and then begin the process so I purchased a rotisserie chicken and turkey breast.

So the first step was going to be removing the meat from the bones.  I was really hesitant about this process, since I tend to buy those boneless skinless cuts of chicken or breasts that are already cleaned, skinless/boneless etc.  So I was getting brave here.

As I stood at the counter pulling meat from the bones (which was surprisingly easy) I actually started feeling a shift within myself.  This simple act of removing chicken/turkey meat from the bones started making me feel like I was in control again.  I was literally taking control of what I was putting in my body.  I made two Tupperware containers, one with chicken and the other with turkey.  These were going to be used throughout the week for other meals.  The bones, skin, fat, etc I was reserving aside to become part of the bone broth.


Once the meat was completely removed then I filled the crockpot with 4 quarts of filtered water, 2 tbsp of apple cider vinegar 1 whole bulb(?) of garlic and 1 tsp of sea salt.  I then added all the bones and turned the crockpot on high.  It was almost 9pm when I was finally ready to let it do it's magic.

I learned that it probably would have been better to heat the water first so it wouldn't take so long for the mixture to get to boiling but live and learn.  Once it all comes to a nice boiling bubble then you turn it down to low and cook for up to 24 hours.

I wasn't really sure what to expect smell wise, I guess I figured it would smell something like it does when I cook a pork tenderloin or something in the crockpot, I thought maybe it would have a yummy garlic smell.  I woke up at one point in the night and noticed this strange smell. It didn't smell like spices or chicken, I don't really know how to describe it other than just odd.  I'm guessing its just the smell of the skin, fat and bones breaking down.  It's not a bad smell, just not anything I was expecting.


The next morning (around 6am) I was excited to lift the cover and see what it was looking like.  I guess I left quite a bit of the meat and fat on the bones. I didn't even both trying to get the meat off the wings I just through the whole thing in there.  So the next morning all the meat, skin, and fat was floating on top.  I gave it a little stir and left it to do its magic all day long.

We were planning to come home right about 24 hours after it all began so I was pretty excited to see what it was going to look like by the end.  We ended up meeting up with my mom for a movie and got home a couple of hours later than planned but I figure that was just that much more time for the broth to do its thing.

When we got home I turned off the broth and let it cool for a couple of hours.  I was really curious about how it was all going to taste.

I purchased a wire strainer and once it was cooled I strained the broth into a bowl, catching the bones, skin and meat and leaving just this lovely bone broth to be packaged and enjoyed.



The bones were really neat.  They were so soft that you could squeeze them between your fingers and they would just crush.  It was really pretty interesting and I'm still trying to research and see if there is anything that they would be good for... seems like they could be used for fertilizer or something.  If I find anything I sure will share it.



I then used a measuring cup to put the broth into smaller Tupperware containers for easy storage in the refrigerator and freezer.   I read on a site somewhere that you could put the broth into ice-cube trays for easy single servings of the broth for cooking vegetables and so I put some of the broth into an ice-cube tray.  I think my husband thought that was a bit nuts but he was going along with it, I mean what did he have to lose? I was already making home-made broth, something I have never dreamed of doing.


I enjoyed a cup of the broth right then and there.  It felt so good to know that I was doing something to move my life/health in the right direction.

I have enjoyed the broth almost every single day over the course of the last week.  I would warm the broth and drink it straight, I would put some of the meat from the chicken and/or turkey in with the broth and have soup.  One night I even took some chicken, turkey and left over pork tenderloin... warmed them up in a skillet, added some spinach and some broth and cooked it all down into this hardy meal.

I even managed to get my husband to try it one night when he wasn't feel well.  It said it was alright, I guess that means it didn't suck. HA!

My next adventure with bone broth I am going to roast my own chicken before making broth out of the bones.  Should be interesting. :)

The journey begins/continues...