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Ontario, Canada
I am a wife, mother and grandma who enjoys the many aspects of homemaking. A variety of interests and hobbies combined with travel keep me active. They reflect the importance of family, friends, home and good food.
Cook ingredients that you are used to cooking by other techniques, such as fish, chicken, or hamburgers. In other words be comfortable with the ingredients you are using.
--Bobby Flay

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Please watch this area for important information like updates, food recalls, polls, contests, coupons, and freebies.
  • [March 19, 2020] - Effective Mar 17, this blog will no longer accept advertising. The reason is very simple. If I like a product, I will promote it without compensation. If I don't like a product, I will have no problem saying so.
  • [March 17, 2020] - A return to blogging! Stay tuned for new tips, resources and all things food related.
  • [February 1, 2016] - An interesting report on why you should always choose organic tea verses non-organic: Toxic Tea (pdf format)
  • Sticky Post - Warning: 4ever Recap reusable canning lids. The reports are growing daily of these lids losing their seal during storage. Some have lost their entire season's worth of canning to these seal failures! [Update: 4ever Recap appears to be out of business.]

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Monday, May 02, 2022

Bones

Honestly, for the life of me I cannot understand why anyone would buy boneless meat of any kind.    To me, bones are a true gift.  Yes, you pay for bones in the price of the meat but you also pay more for boneless cuts of meat.  If you hunt or fish, those bones are basically free too.

Bones are the basis of stocks and broths.  Both are nutrient dense, must have pantry staples.  I have a bone-in ham bought on sale.  About half will be canned, half will be spread over a couple of meals and the bone will be tossed into a crockpot with celery, carrots, onions, beans and seasonings for a lovely soup that will feed us over a few days.  An alternative to actually making the soup using the bone, is to simply make stock or broth something I routinely do.  The stock can be used within a few days or froze or canned.  I prefer to can my stocks because I have limited freezer space.  Home canned stock can later be used as the base for soups and stews or the liquid for canning meats or the liquid for cooking rice/beans/pasta.  Finally the spent bones from making stock can be further cooked then ground into bonemeal for the garden.  

Stock is ever so simple to make - bones, onion with skin, carrot, celery, peppercorns, bayleaf and the magical ingredient to help release calcium from the bones into the stock, vinegar.  I prefer using a pressure cooker but long, low simmer on the stovetop works well too.  I have also used a stem juicer to make absolutely gorgeous stock. 

Garden Gnome
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