three from one

I have been reading a few food-based blogs lately. Well, not necessarily food-based; more food-concerned, or just food-orientated. A lot of topics are covered and discussed; such as whole foods, seasonal foods, reducing waste, re-using and recycling; simplifying..

And I realised.. I am a great pretender. 

In some regards. That is; I try to cook food I enjoy. I try and use stuff from my garden.  I feed leftovers to my guinea pigs (not as efficient as the chooks we used to have, but ok), I support local business and growers by buying from produce shops and local fruit and veg shops. I talk to the owners about where their produce comes from. I buy free range chicken and eggs and I try and buy organic where affordable and possible.

But I am not very good at making basics.

Such as stock. I have never made my own stock. This is slightly embarrassing to admit. I have made jam, but it was a long time ago. I used to make bread when we were on Bruny, but I haven't done so since I got back. I make my own pizza bases, but I should be making my own pasta, too.

(I do, and have made my own pesto frequently.) 

As I read Kate, and Rohan, amongst others, I am inspired by how hard these people work, and how important it is that they do what they do. I want to be able to inspire my children to live simple, meaningful, educated, independent and happy lives of creation and effort-based reward.

Where to start?

Well, back to the stock.

Tonight's meal was a simple roast chicken (free range). I stuffed it with tarragon from the garden, Australian garlic and lemon. It got roasted Stephanie Alexander style. We ate it with a potato gratin, homemade (not my own potatoes, but I'm planting some soon) and a green salad.

The leftover chicken meat was shredded and put aside for chicken pies. 

Instead of throwing the bones in the bin, I've put them aside for tomorrow. I'm going to make my first ever chicken stock. And then I'm going to use it as a base for pumpkin soup. The pumpkin is a from my friend, who has a farm at Imbil. My eldest is not keen on pumpkin, but she loves pumpkin soup. Go figure..

The leftover salad went into the guinea pig box.

So, there was nothing to go in the rubbish bin tonight. Amazing.
And I will have my three meals from one chook.

Tarragon. I don't think it's the French variety specified by Stephanie, but it's aromatic, flavoursome and so pretty when in flower. In fact, it's the last plant standing in this veggie bed I just turned over. I just couldn't bear to dig it out. It survived the wild weird weather of this summer just gone, and I think it deserves to stay.

There are all kinds of small changes I can make. We can consume less. We can consume better. We can enjoy growing and using and sharing the bounty from our garden. We can understand where our waste goes, and what happens to it, and what effect this has on our environment.
We all have to start somewhere.