I fill alot of freezer bags with liquid. I freeze extra soup and stock when I have it. I’ve found that the easiest way to fill a bag with liquid is to put it inside of a bowl to hold it upright. I’ve seen special tongs that will hold a bag open, but they don’t look like they’d hold the weight of soup. It works for me….and it’s free since I already have the bowl!!
I don’t like paying money for things when I can make it myself for pennies. One of the easiest things I’ve found that I can make is chicken stock. It can be made with scraps which makes it free (to me at least).
I keep two gallon sized Ziploc freezer bags in our freezer. One holds vegetable trimmings. I put all sorts of things in it: onion skins, the ends of the onions that always get chopped off, carrot skins, garlic skins, pieces of garlic cloves that are left after squishing it in the press, celery ends……you name it! As long as it isn’t rotten, it goes into the bag. It’s also the perfect place for pieces of celery that get wilted and are floppy.
The other bag holds chicken bones and skin. I’ve completely stopped buying chicken without bones since I’ve realized that (1) you pay more money for boneless, skinless anything and (2) I can make chicken stock with them!!! So, after I cook chicken, I pull it off the bones and the bones get tossed into the bag. If I’m making something that doesn’t require the skin to stay on the chicken, I pull it off and put that into the bag as well.
Earlier this week I cooked a roaster chicken in the oven. We carved what meat we wanted for dinner that night and a couple of days later I picked the remaining meat off of the carcass to use for another meal. The carcass combined with the bones that I had saved from a week or two ago was enough to make stock.
Left over chicken bones, vegetable scraps, and some nearly dead carrots for chicken stock
I dumped everything into my 7 qt. dutch oven, added some pepper corns, filled it to within an inch of the top with water, covered it with the lid, and brought it to a boil. I let it at a nice, rolling boil for about an hour and then turned the burner down so that it was just simmering. The concoction simmered for about 3 hours, then I turned the stove off and let it all cool down until I could work with it without burning myself.
Everything in the pot and ready to go
The next step is to strain everything out of the stock. I don’t have a strainer, so I use my largest metal mixing bowl and two colanders. My larger colander has holes that are on the larger side (a piece of fettuccine can fit through the holes) and my smaller colander, which I put inside of the larger one, has smaller holes (a piece of uncooked spaghetti is just big enough to not fit through it’s holes). I place the two colanders into my mixing bowl and pour the entire contents of the pot into the smaller colander. Then I pick up the larger colander (which also picks up the smaller colander) and let all of the stock drain out of it. For the most part, my two-colander system works well. I’m not overly picky about wanting a perfectly clear stock, so whatever might get through the double colander doesn’t bother me.
Next, I either can or freeze the stock. This week I decided to freeze the stock because I really didn’t feel like getting the canning things out. I poured the stock into a gallon sized Ziploc freezer bag, double bagged it, and the put it into the freezer. You’ll note that I didn’t strain off the chicken fat from the stock. I choose to keep the fat in my stock because it helps beef up the immune system (See?…giving people chicken soup when they are sick is done for a reason!!!). If you wanted to remove the fat, keep the stock in the bowl or pot and let it cool completely. The fat will rise to the top and solidify. You can easily remove it with a large spoon.
Completed chicken stock double bagged and ready for the freezer.
So, that is how I make chicken stock for free. Do you have a different way to use up food scraps? Feel free to share what you do down in the comments! 
I don’t play alot of games on Facebook. In fact, I only play two. A couple of weeks ago I came across a clip from the Ellen Degeneres show in which Ellen was talking about a new game called WeTopia.
Now before you decide you don’t have the time to read about some game app on Facebook, let me tell you how WeTopia is different. When you play WeTopia, you are actually helping people around the world……..for free. All it costs is a little of your time. Like 5 minutes out of your day type of time. Seriously, I spent more than 5 minutes in the McDonald’s drive-thru last week for a frappe. I think I can find 5 minutes to help someone who is in need.
When you play the game, you collect “joy” and every 100 joy is a hot meal sent to Haiti….or some new books for someone in the US to read. When you play, you are providing clean water for people to drink or funding for a school somewhere. You choose what program you want to help.
People playing WeTopia are making it possible for 3 year old Kenny to have a warm meal
I love helping people, but we don’t always have the money for me to donate to organizations. So far, people playing WeTopia have been able to donate 114,623 hot meals, 469,940 liters of clean water, 1,537 pairs of shoes. They have raised 38% of the total cost for the US Change Program in Louisiana, 18% of the US Literacy Program in Kentucky, 28% of the health care program for homeless kids in New York. They are helping to fund a school that needs to be built in Flemands, Haiti as well as textbooks to kids in Haiti. They have fully funded a pharmacy that cares for up to 200 people a day in Haiti. ….and they’ve done this all just by playing this simple game.
WeTopia is still in the beta version and is currently working on making some new connections that will provide things for other areas around the world.
So, if you are going to waste some time on Facebook, let me encourage you to check WeTopia out. Now that I think of it….is it really wasting time if you are helping someone? No, I don’t think so.
You know how you get spare bulbs and fuses with new strands of Christmas lights? If you are anything like me, you put them aside and forget about them until you find them again in March long after your tree has been torn down and all things Christmas have been put away. Or maybe you put them in the Christmas decorations box and ‘lose’ them in the midst of extra tinsel or balls that you don’t use anymore.
You never miss those spare bulbs or fuses until a bulb completely falls out of the strand of lights causing it not to light and rendering it completely useless.
During our second Christmas together, I came up with a solution for spare bulbs and fuses and it has worked well for us through the following 8 Christmases. …and honestly, if something works well for that long in my house, it’s either genius or a miracle………or both!
I found a random (and fun!) Easter egg one Christmas. Apparently our cats had been playing with it many months before that and had lost it in the black hole that we have under the couch. I tossed the extra bulbs and fuses in the egg and then put a piece of scotch tape on the egg so it wouldn’t open while boxes were in the attic. The fact that my bulb/fuse container is a brightly colored Easter egg helps me find it among all of the Christmas-y colored things in our storage tubs. The smile on the egg is an added bonus.
An Easter egg in my Christmas bin….it’s what works for me!
