Johnny Appleseed has nothing on me!

Saturday was rainy and seriously cold, but plans had been made and there was no way that I or my friends were going to back out of them.  So off into the Virginia countryside we went. By 10:30 am we had found the pick your own apple farm and let me tell you the proprietors were quite surprised to see city girls willing to brave the rain and pick some apples.  Despite the cold it was so much fin.  I have never gone apple picking as it is not a very common thing to do in SoCal, so I was amped up.  Rome, golden delicious, and red delicious were scattered all over the place and their colors were so vivid under the grey sky.  I honestly hadn't really thought about how one apple picked, but I had imagined ladders and reaching up into the branches.  Yesterday I found myself crawling on hand and knee to get under all the branches and checking out what was strewn on the ground.  Although there were some great apples still hanging above, I was not feeling the climbing tree idea as I envisioned my ungraceful self falling down.

I wish it had been less dreary as I would have loved to enjoy all the other produce they had at this little farm.  30 minutes picking enough apples to last 2 weeks was enough and we went on to do some wine tasting.  Yummmm......

And boozing did happen and the rest of my day consisted of cheese and wine and I would not have had it any other way.  But today I woke up determined to put these apples to use.  I mean there is no way I would be apple to eat all these bad boys in a week.  As I do not have pie plates, which is probably a good thing, and I wanted to do more than a few baked apples I decided to try my hand at apple sauce.  The recipe has cranberries, apples, maple syrup, sugar, water, and cinnamon and it tuned out awesome.  So now I am swimming in apple sauce heaven over here and am super excited to have a new snack for my lunch bag.  Yeah, you should be jealous.

Okay I know it doesn't look super appetizing, but you have to trust me.  It tastes awesome and I feel like I am making some headway in this whole "learning how to cook things besides grilled chicken on a George Foreman".  

Hope everyone has a wonderful week and I will try to think of other fun things to talk about.

It smells like chicken in here! And I mean that in the best way possible.

So I have been on a hiatus and for the few people who amuse me and read this I apologize. To put it bluntly the last couple of weeks have not been my best.  I have found myself single again and although my new relationship status is for the best a break up is a break up and it just plains sucks!   For the most part I have been kept busy by my friends and have actually done quite a few things: learning how to make homemade pizza dough, drink champagne, Indian food night, drink wine, sweaty yoga, drink beer, etc.  Ya know, the standard stuff people do to distract themselves.  

During the last two weeks I have been seeking out comfort through food.  No friends, I do not appear to be one of these girls who becomes super model skinny from sadness, which actually is a bit of a bummer.  I instead started putting on my winter hibernation weight with chocolate, pizza, falafel, and enough booze to make me feel like I was back working at Club Med. But now with the sudden turn of weather here in DC all I have been wanting is soup.  This actually works out to be a benefit to me and my waist line.  And I am definitely not the only person that feels that way as many of the other food blogs I read have been focusing on soup, so I have had wonderful inspiration.

Last weekend I attended an awesome knife skills at Hill's Kitchen which is wonderful kitchen supply store here on Capitol Hill.  The class was actually focused on how to butcher a bird.  Let me tell you that is pretty empowering to be able to take a knife and be able to take a part a whole bird.  I am not saying that I would be able to do it perfectly on my own, but the knowledge is there.  The point of this digression is that from this class I came home with a bag of chicken bones and meat that I am determined to use every bit of.  So what with my craving for soup and a bag of bones lurking in my fridge it only seemed best to try my hand at making some chicken stock.  So here is a photo essay of my chicken stock making day!  (and yes it took most of the day!) 

Guess What?.....Chicken Butt!!!

And so it begins...10:30 am

The final product....6:00 pm!

I will not be lacking in chicken stock for awhile, don't you agree?  Honestly it should have been done around 4:30 pm but with my electric stove it is pretty heard for me to maintain anything at a simmer for such a long period.  So I decided to keep it on longer to let it reduce more and I think that was a good decision.  

So what did I make with my fabulous stock now readily on hand?  Absolutely nothing!  The goal was to make stock people, not cook something with it!  Honestly I just did not think that far but there are plans for matzo ball soup, using the stock to make cous cous instead of water, etc.  So stay tuned for my chicken stock extravaganza as well as fabulous recipes with all my other chicken parts that are currently on ice!

Tootaloo chickadees and I hope all of you have a wonderful weekend.  I am going apple picking tomorrow and will try to share some pics so that you can be jealous. :)