Since reading Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma some five years ago, my eating habits have continuously evolved. The more I read, the more they change. My husband and I kick around various ideas on how to remove ourselves from wasteful consumerism and move toward sustainability. For about a year now, I've been making my own stock. Previously I bought organic vegetable broth in the resealable/pourable cartons. I wasn't sure those boxes were recyclable, but I put them in the bin anyway hoping they were. Excess sodium concerned me, too. Why pay $4 for 2 cups of broth when I could make it myself? I thought.
My husband proudly shared our resourcefulness with a colleague. "So, you're saying your wife makes broth out of what farmer's feed to pigs?" his less-than-impressed colleague responded. He hadn't thought of it in quite that light, but essentially, that's what I do.
We save organic potato peels, the heels of onions and garlic and carrots (any root vegetable, really), the stalks of broccoli--trimmings off any vegetable featured for the evening meal. When our tub runneth over, we drizzle olive oil over the parings and roast them in the oven on 400 degrees for about 30 minutes. All that caramelized goodness goes into a Dutch oven filled with water, whole peppercorns, a bay leaf or two, some salt, and maybe some celery and carrot. A long, slow boil produces roughly 10 cups of vegetable stock that goes into plastic yogurt containers and is frozen.
Until we joined a meat share program at our local farm, Randle Farms, we didn't have any meat stock. However, with the two whole chickens we get each month, I cut out the back bones, throw them into a pot of water with onion, carrot, celery, peppercorns, salt, and bay leaves, and we now have frozen chicken stock as well.
So, that was my one "green" act today: I made up a batch each of chicken broth and vegetable broth. Our freezer is well-stocked for soup weather.
