Happy New Year! 

I can say that because it's still a couple of days before February : ) Which brings me to a big reason for this blog post: intentions.
Years ago I stopped making resolutions, because they can be so disappointing and great bait for self-blame, and started making intentions. One of my biggest intentions for this year is self-nurturing. There's a lot of ways that can materialize in my daily life, especially in cutting stress out of my life, for example: enabling myself to be on time, so I'm not feeling rushed or beating myself up for inconveniencing others. Another way is working with herbs as food to nurture myself and my family and making it simple.

A perfect model for that is chicken stock, aka bone broth. This is about as simple, nurturing, and nourishing as it gets! It's great for any kind of recovery or convalescence, when you're in a hurry, or need something light with some protein. The first time I made stock was with the help of the Nourishing Traditions cookbook. That gave me the basics, and I've been tweaking it since then. Vegetarians can make this, too, just leave out the bones. You won't get all the same nutrients, but it will still have lots in there.

One thing I added to the recipe to make it more simple and efficient is a little thing that I love the name of: freezer compost. Freezer compost is very basically where you take any compostable veggie scraps, i.e. onion and garlic skins and ends, broccoli and kale stems, carrot tops, etc, and throw them in a container in the freezer until you're ready to make stock. Then, instead of using fresh veggies just for stock and having to process them first, you can just chuck these in the pot. Once again, I'm a traditional herbalist, so I make recipes with a pinch of this and a handful of that, which might be substituted for a handful of something else next time. So I apologize if this makes you crazy. If you have questions, just ask.

The other way to simplify this is to cook a chicken a week, then you always have bones. Just throw the bones in the freezer with the compost. When you're ready to make stock, pull everything out and let thaw. Now the fun part: beat the bones with a meat hammer.

Meat hammer, fresh ginger from a friend's garden, and a good sharp knife