Drismal

[lillibet]

I am frequently amused at what a good job my mp3 server does at tracking my moods and offering up the right song for the moment.

The weather is foggy and damp, very stereotypically English, although I think we get it more here in Boston than we did in London.

My mom and I made turkey stock this morning--I think I may make myself some soup for dinner. The whole house is saturated with the smell.

I worked for a few hours this afternoon. I was scanning a textbook about Cuba, which was interesting. Scanning doesn't really give me time to read the material, but I studied Cuba pretty intensively when I was in college, so the snippets I catch as I turn the pages and proofread the formatting give me interesting things to think about.

My sister has my parents this evening, so I'm not sure what we'll do. Probably watch tv--yesterday was fairly exhausting, in a mostly-good way.

OK, time for that soup!

Comments

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

Hey, I'm making stock/soup for my first time this year- maybe you can help me figure out how to do it right? I dropped all the bones and a bunch of veggies and herbs in a giant pot after dinner and simmered the hell out of them for a few hours while we watched a movie and (unbelievably) ate even more pie late that night. Then I stuck the pot in the fridge. My hope is that the fat rises to the top and I can skim it off. Then what?

Stock

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

Yes, that should work. As much as everyone talks about skimming, steve and I recently confessed to each other that neither of us every skim and that seems to work just fine.

Here's what I do...throw all the bones into the pot with some veggies (onions, celery, carrots, usually) and herbs. I use the water in which the potatoes boiled. I let it boil for a few hours, then let it sit overnight. The next day I strain out the liquid, then pick through all the stuff, discarding the bones and setting aside the bits of meat. I throw all the veggies into the food processor, together with the tiny meaty bits left in the bottom of the pot, and grind them up until they're completely liquid, then stir that back into the stock. That gives the stock a lot more body--great for making soups.

Then what you do with it depends on how you want to use it. You can reduce the stock, put it in ice cube trays and freeze it to make concentrated stock cubes to add to stuff in the future. Or you can make soup (e.g. boil it up with pasta or rice and some veggies and add back in the meat scraps). One thing I've been doing is making single-serving soup--just pour some stock in a bowl with some pre-cooked rice and a handful of meat and a chopped carrot and microwave. That keeps the starch from absorbing the stock as it sits.

I hear your gravy was the most delicious thing ever :)

Dan Phillips

[thatwesguy.livejournal.com]

...rocks. I haven't seen him in forever. I still get House Of Rain stuck in my head from time to time. For no apparent reason other than it's a damn good song.

Re: Dan Phillips

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

Yeah--Dan writes some good tunes. It's funny to me how much he and Glen sound alike. I have Dan's solo stuff and some of Toad's music on the server and when a Toad song comes on I find myself thinking "hmmn, I don't remember this song of Dan's" :)

We miss Dan and Jean. They're cool folk.