Chicken Stock

After you've cooked a whole chicken, let it cool and pick all the meat off of it. Place the carcass into your crock-pot with:
a carrot or two
1-2 celery stalks
a half of an onion
a bay leaf
a few garlic cloves
1 tsp Italian seasoning
a few dashes of pepper
then fill the crock to the top with water

Turn it on low and let it "cook" over night. In the morning, turn it off and let it cool. Once it's cooled (completely) strain it and ladle it into canning jars leaving about 2 inches from the top free, and freeze. I make mine with no salt and add salt to my cooking later. You could also can this so that you could store it on your pantry shelf.

You can use your broth/stock for any recipe that calls for it. It works great for soups, rice, gravy, etc.

Robin's Pasta Sauce

I've been wanting to make my own pasta sauce for quite some time and so the experimenting began. But one day I was at a friend's house and she had this sauce cooking in her crock-pot and gave me a taste. Oh my was it good! I begged, pleaded, got on my knees, wept tears of envy as I petitioned her to please share her recipe with me. She was very kind and said that yes, I could have it AND I asked her permission to share it with all of you. Now, Robin doesn't have a blog otherwise I'd be pointing you to her blog but she IS a blog reader so feel free to comment on this post and thank her for this recipe if you like it. She made this up herself and well, as her sauce implies, she's a great cook. Not only is SHE a great cook (and I know this because I've enjoyed tasting her cooking several times) but her husband is also a great cook! (Sorry if I'm embarrassing you guys, but truly Bill, you and Robin make quite the culinary couple!) I used the same begging tactics to get a copy of Bill's chocolate bread pudding recipe that was incredible....so I'll have to ask them if I can share that on here too. It's time for Bill and Robin to open a restaurant or at least start a cooking blog! =0) hint hint.

Robin uses all fresh ingredients from her summer garden to make this recipe and then she freezes it in her deep freeze in canning jars. I have a very large deep freeze as well and seeing that I hate the time and energy it takes to can, I loved the idea of freezing it. BUT you can surely can it as well if that is your preference. If you are freezing it, be sure to leave room at the top of the jar for expansion like in my picture above. Do not fill them all the way.

I didn't have fresh garden produce to make this with so I converted most of the recipe for you to canned tomatoes and dried herbs. I have to admit that Robin's fresh version was better but that the canned and dried version still taste good and works well. This IS our new pasta sauce. I used the organic diced tomatoes from Costco and the organic tomato paste from Costco as well.

4 onions
4 garlic cloves (1 tsp garlic powder)
2 diced bell peppers
1/2 c olive oil
16 cups chopped fresh tomatoes (or 8 cans diced tomatoes -14.5 oz)
1/4 c fresh oregano (or 1/8 c of dried crushed)
1/4 c fresh basil (or 1/8 c of dried crushed)
1/4 c fresh parsley (or 1/8 c of dried crushed)
1/4 c sugar
1 tsp pepper
2 tbsp salt
2 6 oz cans tomato paste

Saute onion, garlic, peppers in olive oil. Combine everything in crock-pot. Cook 2-3 hours on low. Stir often. Then let cool. Put in canning jars and freeze.

Other Info-
-My kids aren't crazy about the chunky tomatoes (which I personally love!) so when I'm going to use a jar of sauce I pour it first into our blender to puree it and then the kids love it.

-This recipe makes about 5 large canning jar sizes. It also fits in my 6 qt crock-pot and I don't know how well it would fit in a 5 qt. but you could try it. There was a little room in my 6 qt still. My picture shows 4 jars because we used about 1 jars worth for dinner that night.


Differences-
-Robin doesn't add the tomato paste until she is ready to use a jar of the sauce. When she is heating it to use, then she adds 1-2 cans of the paste for one jar of sauce. I put 2 cans of paste into the original ingredients when it was cooking in the crock-pot and don't add anymore paste when I use a jar.

-I also rounded Robin's original recipe of 3/4 tsp of pepper up to 1 tsp.

-One of the times I made it, I added more sugar because the canned tomatoes just aren't as sweet as garden fresh ones. So I made it with 1/2 c organic sugar instead of 1/4 c.

-Robin uses green bell peppers, I use red bell peppers. (I use red because they are easier to digest and they are packed with nutrients and it's a sneaky way to get them into my kids who don't want to eat them otherwise.) You can use any color bell pepper that you prefer.

Tomato Soup

This recipe is from my friend, Sandi who got it from her friend, Judy Zanders. I don't know Judy but thanks, Judy! It's yummy! You can use this tomato soup as a base for other soups as well such as making veggie soup or minestrone. This recipe is a canning recipe so it makes a LOT of soup. You can also freeze it in a deep freeze instead of canning it and you can also use it fresh for a large group (say a dinner at church or family reunion....etc.).



Ingredients
12 quarts of tomatoes (1/2 bushel or 25 lbs)
7 med. onions
½ bunch of celery
3 bay leaves
1.5 cups of flour
1.5 cups of butter
½ cup sugar
2 tsp pepper
Salt to taste

Cook onion, celery, bay leaves in small portion of chopped tomatoes. Blend the onion/tomato mixture in a blender and then run through a sieve. Add this blended mixture to the remaining chopped tomatoes and cook in large pot until everything is hot and cooked down to a liquid. Pour mixture into a blender and run through a sieve. Cream butter and flour, then whisk 2 cups of the tomato mixture slowly, this will make a rue to thicken the soup. Add sugar, salt & pepper. Whisk flour mixture into soup slowly. After it is thickened ~ fill sterile jars 1 inch from the top, screw on lid with ring. Process the jars in a pressure cooker, 10 lbs of pressure for 10 minutes. Remove from cooker and gently place on cooling board leave over night, do not remove jars from the cooling board until cooled, as it can compromise the seal.

Makes approx 26 pints or 14 quarts.


When I'm serving it just as tomato soup, I add about 1 cup of milk to a pint of the soup to make it creamy.