kitchen hippie

in the kitchen:

my first batch of kombucha came out great.  if you aren't familiar with kombucha it's a fermented tea beverage.   i think i've added a link for more information about it before but i'll do it again here.

pictured above is some bread i baked this morning with some sourdough starter from my friend jason.

i also wanted to just talk about buying local meat.  i don't buy or eat industrially-raised meat anymore.  if you recall, the final straw for me was reading the book eating animals.  but i know buying local can give a person sticker shock.  here's the thing though..there are lots of ways to make ethically raised meat worth the price.  often times i will just make a meal with less meat.  so a casserole is one way to do this or a salad with a smaller portion on top. 

but here's another example of stretching and using thoroughly.  i recently bought a chicken raised on a small farm in new hampshire for $20.  I baked it and we had a chicken diner the first night.  we still had some leftover meat so i put that in the fridge for another meal.  i simmered the carcass in a big pot of water with a quartered onion, a couple celery stalks, a couple carrots and some garlic to make stock.  if you buy chicken stock in the store it can get pricey so this alone was a big money saver.  i used maybe a quarter of the stock and picked the carcass to make soup.  and i still have a gallon of stock to put in the freezer for later use.  all in all i'm guessing we got 5 meals from that one chicken.  i do understand that all this takes time.  but in terms of money, it's really pretty inexpensive if you use the whole thing efficiently.

ok, now i'm going to take my kitchen hippie/home ec./little house on the prairie apron off.

xx,

me

ps- i also want to share a link to this time magazine article about how real food champions and environmental activists are 2 sides of the same coin.