Sunday Cooking

Sundays are a good day to do nothing.  It is actually my only day to do nothing.  Since I work 6 days a week it get's hard for me to just relax so that is usually what I do.  How do I relax?  I cook.  I know that it may not seem relaxing to some, but when I'm in the kitchen I know what I am doing and everything turns out as it should.  I can't say that about many aspects of my life.  So today I made a couple things for myself and I also made a couple things for a friend who just had her second baby.  First up on the roster today was Curried Butternut Squash Soup. 

To start I made a curry blend.  The original recipe calls for just using curry powder off the shelf, but when given the chance, I'll make my own of anything.  I had made a recipe awhile ago in which you made your own hot curry spice blend, I liked it so that is what I used for my soup. 

Here are my spices, ground coriander, cinnamon, tumeric, cardamom, mustard, cumin, and hot hungarian paprika.  It does have a kick to it, but not too much.  If you are not a fan of spice then either use less paprika or you can use sweet paprika.  Next you want to chop up your veggies.  Peel and dice up your butternut squash, dice an onion and chop a couple cloves of garlic.  It doesn't really matter the size of your veg because you are going to puree the soup in the end.  Heat a little oil in your pot (I tried to use very little maybe a teaspoon) add your onion and garlic.  Add a little salt and saute until soft.

The next step in the original recipe is to add everything in the pot, the squash, spices and broth.  Of course I can't really follow a recipe very well.  When you use dried spices you want to add them to the pot and let them warm up and get a little toasty so that they come back to life.  So what I did is I added my squash to the pot with the onions and garlic.  Then I added my spices and let them toast in the pan for about a minute.

After that add the stock.  You can use veggie stock and keep this totally vegetarian, I used chicken stock because it is what I had on hand.  Add the stock and like one of my favorite chefs says, BTB RTS.  Which means bring to boil, reduce to simmer.  Simmer for about 20 minutes or until the squash is tender.  Then you can either transfer the soup to a blender in batches and blend until smooth, or if you have a handy dandy stick blender you can puree the soup right in the pot (which is what I did, why dirty another piece of equipment?!)  Put it in containers to cool and you're good to go!

Such a pretty color!  On to the next!  I made some mac 'n cheese and grilled chicken for my friend and her family.  Something kid friendly and something healthy.  I can imagine that anything as long as she doesn't have to make it, just reheat it would work for her. 

Cheesy and delicious!  I thought that 2 smaller pans would be good because they can eat one now and put the other in the freezer and reheat it at a later date.  Last but not least....I made myself a treat!  I made blondies from a recipe that I found on pinterest.  I am just in love with it!  I am shocked with myself that I am actually going back to past pins and actually looking them up and trying the recipes.  This particular recipe I would like to play with.  It calls for some butter, not much, but I would like to see if I can eliminate it completely.  Also there are 2 eggs in it.  Next time I'll see if it will work with egg whites or something else.

Let me just tell you they are delish!  Once I perfect my healthy healthy recipe I will share.  Until then, happy cooking!  <3

House Hunting

So I have been looking for a house for quite some time now.  It is no easy task.  Not that I thought that I would go looking one day and the first house I would see would be the house of my dreams that I could afford and all the pieces would just fit into place.  I had no idea that the process would be this frustrating!  Even though they say that it's a "buyer's market" it is still not easy to find a house that will work.  Yes I do have a list of things that I would like in a house.  There are things that need to be there and there are things that if they are there it's a huge bonus!  I have been looking at houses for several months now and not that I thought I would be in one by now, but I thought that I would be closer.  There have been several along the way that came close but for various reasons fell through.  I got excited about all of those possibilities but then things just didn't work out.  I just have to keep thinking that those houses weren't meant to be.  When the right one comes along all the pieces with just fall into place and everything will work out.  Now here I am, again, getting close, but I can't get excited.  My fate is in someone else's hands.  So we sit here and wait, and while we wait, we cook!

It's my brother's birthday this week so he came over for dinner.  Me being the pastry chef in the family I always make dessert.  My brother is kinda plain when it comes to desserts.  Usually some kind of vanilla cake with vanilla icing.  For the past couple years I have made him my version of a strawberry shortcake.  I make my go-to vanilla cake, macerated strawberries, and white chocolate mousse.  So amazingly delicious!  This year however, to everyone's surprise he requested something different.  Cheesecake with either strawberry or raspberry.  So I went fishing around the cookbooks and the internet for a recipe.  I have a fabulous recipe, but it makes an enormous cheesecake and no one really wanted to be stuck with leftovers.  So I searched out some recipes for mini cheesecakes.  Let me tell you....Amazing!

I combined several recipes that I found and came up with these White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecakes.  They were delish!


White Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecakes

For the crust
-1 1/2 c Nilla Wafer crumbs (one of my brother's favorite cookies)
-4 Tablespoons melted butter
-sprinkle of sugar
-pinch of salt

For the cheesecakes
-2 8oz blocks of cream cheese
-1/2-3/4 cup of sugar (I used vanilla sugar)
-2 eggs
-1 teaspoon vanilla
-pinch of salt
-6-8oz melted white chocolate

For the raspberry sauce
-3oz of raspberries
-1 Table spoon of sugar
-a squirt of lemon juice

-Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.  Generously grease 18 muffin cups.  Mix the crumbs, butter, sugar, and salt in a bowl till the mixture looks like wet sand.  Put about a tablespoon of the crumb mixture in the bottom of each muffin cup and press into the bottom.  Bake in the oven for about 5-6 minutes.  Set aside.
-Put the raspberries, sugar, and lemon juice in a blender and puree until smooth.  Pass mixture through a strainer and set aside.
-In the bowl of a mixer mix the cream cheese with the paddle attachment on med speed until smooth and creamy.  Add sugar and mix until incorporated.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.  Add the salt and vanilla.  Then add the eggs one at a time.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl.  Add the chocolate and mix until blended.
-Divide cheesecake mixture evenly among the 18 muffin cups filling the cups about two thirds full.  Take raspberry sauce and drop small drops on the surface of the cheesecake.  With a toothpick swirl the sauce into the cheesecake in whatever pattern you like.   Place the muffin tin in a large roasting pan and fill roasting pan with boiling water going up about 1/2 the side of the muffin tin.  Carefully transfer pan to the oven.  Bake for 20-22 min until set.  Let cool completely before trying to remove cheesecakes from tins. 
-To remove, run a paring knife around the edge of the cheesecake and gently lift the cheesecake out of the tin.  Enjoy <3

Meatless Saturday?

Lately I have been trying to step it up with my healthy eating habits.  Not only do I want to eat more veggies, eat less processed foods, eat more whole foods, and drink more water, I want to eat more of a plant based diet.  This is the perfect time of year to do it since being catholic I can't eat meat on Fridays anyway, so why not try to not eat meat other days too?!  It's not that easy.  Maybe it's a mental thing but in the past, on days I don't eat meat I am never full.  It just seems like I am starving the entire day!  So lately I have been playing around with different meat free recipes and I think I have come up with a keeper!  I was on Pinterest again (obsession!)  and I saw and pinned several recipes for stuffed sweet potatoes.  Since I am in love with sweet potatoes right now I was excited to put my own spin on them.  Whenever I make any recipe I just can't leave it alone.  I always end up changing something.  I heard from one of the many cooks I watch on TV that you should follow a recipe exactly the first time you make it so you know what it's supposed to taste like.  Then you can change it how you want to the next time.  It sounds like a good idea, but I just can't do that.

So for this no recipe recipe, I say that because I don't really measure when I'm cooking (sorry), I started by preheating my oven to 375 degrees.  Wash the sweet potatoes, put them on a sheet tray, and pop them in the oven for 45 min-an hour until cooked through.

While the potatoes are cooking, make the filling.  For the filling I diced a med-large sweet onion, a red bell pepper, and 3 cloves of garlic put them in my trusty cast iron skillet with a very little oil, maybe a teaspoon, and sauted them until tender.

Once the peppers and onions softened I added my selection of spices for this mix (silly me, I forgot to add the smoked paprika in that picture).  I of course did not measure.  I added about 1/2 teaspoon of the cumin and chipotle powder, between 1/2 and a whole teaspoon of the coriander, and a full teaspoon of the ancho chili powder and smoked paprika.  Let the spices get warm and toasty in the pan.  Then I added about a cup of frozen corn, a can of black beans that I drained and rinsed, almost a whole can of diced fire roasted tomatoes, and about a 1/2 head of kale roughly chopped.

Let that saute for 5-10 minutes or until the kale wilts.  While that sautes the potatoes should have come out of the oven and cooled a bit.  Just slice them in half, scoop out the middle, and put it into a bowl to wait for the rest of the filling.

Once the veggies are nice and tender and everything is happy in the skillet,  give it a hit of lime juice, take it off the heat and put it in the bowl with the sweet potatoes.  I did not end up using all of my veggie mixture, I just popped it in it's own container for veggie burritos later in the week.  Mix it all together and get to stuffing!

You will probably have too much filling for the potato halves, but I just over stuffed mine.  The more the better right?!  They taste delicious, they have almost no fat, very little salt and they have all stuff that's good for you!

Enjoy and happy cooking!  <3

More Sweet Treats

My life isn't just about food.  However, that's how it seems because all I have been talking about is food.  I am in the process of buying a house.  I have been looking for awhile.  I have seen several houses that seemed to fit, but they were just not meant to be.  I keep getting outbid or I'm not fast enough and they are already under contract.  It is really frustrating.  I just have to keep thinking positive and know that the right one will come.  When it is right I will know it and everything else will fit into place.  I am going to look at more houses this weekend so maybe, we shall see!  I just mostly want a place of my own for me an my girls.  Oh, I never mentioned them?  Well shame on me, my girls are the loves of my life.  They are the best, they are always there for me when I need them and they are just wonderful.  So this is Erin (she is laying on the other one whose name is Amelia)

Isn't she cute?!  The other is a pug as well.  Anyway.....back to the food!  So I was on Pinterest the other day which is my new obsession!  I just pin things so that I can look at them later which is what most people do I think.  Well I actually went back to one of my pins, another healthy sweet recipe, and it looked really easy and I had everything to make it so I said what the heck!  It's a recipe for no-bake peanut butter chocolate chip balls.  The original recipe called for oats, ground flax, wheat germ, coconut flakes, peanut butter, honey, vanilla, and chocolate chips.  For the most part I followed the recipe.  I played around with the original measurements and some of the actual ingredients.  One thing that I did that didn't change things too much but it saves you fat/calories is I substituted mini chocolate chips for regular chocolate chips.  I put in half the amount the original recipe called for but you still see them throughout the mix and you don't feel deprived of your chocolate.  Mix everything in a bowl till combined then pop it in the fridge to firm up.

 

Now from what it looks like, I was not too confident that it will firm up enough so that I could roll them into balls, but I went with it anyway.  I put it on the screened in porch (because it is stinking cold outside!), but you could put it in the fridge.  Instead of chilling it for an hour, I left it overnight because I fell asleep.  When I revisited the next day, I tried to roll it into balls and it still wouldn't hold together.  So I needed to add something to make it a little more sticky.  I didn't want to add more peanut butter.  I am trying to not use as much sugar in things, even though honey is a natural sweetener I didn't want to add more of that.  So since I have been working on healthy recipes lately I have several fruit pastes on hand.  What is fruit paste you might ask?  All it is is just any dried fruit reconstituted in water and then blended until smooth in the food processor.  I had apricot paste in the fridge

so I decided to use about a 1/4 cup mixed in and it did the trick!  It made my mixture sticky enough so that it would hold together when I rolled it into a ball.

So since it was quite sticky I sprayed my hands with cooking spray and the mixture stuck to itself instead of my hands.  To make them all uniform I used my trusty cookie scoop.  I love those things!  They make quick work of portioning anything cookies, cupcakes, truffles, I have even used them to portion my meatballs!  Once you form all your balls

cover your sheet tray with plastic wrap and pop them in the fridge to firm up again.  Once they are nice and firm you can pop them into a plastic container for storage.  Since they are not baked you do want to store them in the fridge and they will be there when you want a little sweet treat!  So next I want to play around with different nut butters and fruit pastes.  Also maybe adding some nuts and/or dried fruit.  The possibilities are endless!  Enjoy and keep cooking!  <3

No-bake Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Balls  

1 cup rolled oats
2/3 cup flaked coconut
1/4 cup ground flaxseeds
1/4 cup wheat germ
1/2 cup natural peanut butter (I used chunky)
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup fruit paste (I used apricot this time)
1 tsp vanilla

Mix everything together in a bowl, it helps to put the peanut butter and honey in the microwave for a couple seconds to thin it out slightly.  Chill the mixture for about an hour/overnight, roll into balls and store in the fridge.

Deliciousness Part 2...

So now we get to finish the cupcakes.  Yay!  Like I said the day before, cupcakes are just a vehicle for a lot of frosting.  What frosting does everyone think about when they think about red velvet cupcakes?  That's right cream cheese!  Probably one of my favorite types of frosting, it pairs so well with so many different kinds of cupcakes.  Carrot cake, spice cake, chocolate, plain vanilla, it goes with it all!  So again, like the red velvet cupcakes, the recipe for the frosting comes from Martha Stewart.  To start you cream the butter and cream cheese in a mixer, or you could do it with a hand mixer, or you can do it by hand (you'll build serious arm muscles!) until they are light and fluffy.  Then you add your powdered sugar by 1/2 cup increments until it is all mixed in and looking gorgeous!   After all the powdered sugar is mixed in you add your vanilla and I add salt, even if the recipe doesn't call for it.  You might be thinking ewwwww salt?!  Why is she adding salt in a sweet recipe.  While I am a HUGE fan of the whole salty sweet thing, that was not my goal here.  When you add salt to a sweet recipe it just brings out the flavors of everything.  It doesn't end up tasting salty it just ends up tasting better.  So once everything is mixed in it will look something like this....

Doesn't it look amazing?!  I could eat the whole bowl!  Just get me a spoon!  Anyway, once you're done mixing you can either use it right away, which I did, or it will keep in the refrigerator in a container for a few days.

There are many ways to decorate a cupcake, depends on how fancy you want to get.  You can grab a piping bag and go to town making big beautiful swirls with different shaped tips, decorate with fondant, lots of different options.  This time my weapon of choice, a plain old butter knife.  I just wanted them to look lovely and homemade, but not sloppy.  So just pile it on swirl it around and make it nice and neat. 

So I am making these for a friend of mine to give to her husband for Valentines Day.  Her little pet name for him is fish.  So I came up with a little simple decoration that was just too perfect and delicious all at the same time.

Aren't they cute?!  Happy cooking!  <3

Red Velvet Cupcakes

2 1/2 cups cake flour (not self-rising)
2 tablespoons unsweetened dutch-process cocoa
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
2 large eggs, room temperature
1/2 teaspoon red gel-paste food color
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup buttermilk
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons distilled white vinegar

-Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Line standard muffin tins with paper liners.  Whisk together flour cocoa and salt.
-With electric mixer on medium-high speed, whisk together sugar and oil until combined.  Add eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated, scraping down sides of bowl as needed.  Mix in food color and vanilla.
-With mixer on low add flour mixture in three batches, alternating with two additions of buttermilk, mixing well after each addition.  Stir together baking soda and vinegar (it will foam); add mixture to the batter, and mix on medium speed 10 seconds.
-Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each 3/4 full.  Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, about 20 minutes.  Transfer to wire rack to cool.


Cream-Cheese Frosting  

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
12 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
1 pound (4 cups) powdered sugar
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
pinch of salt

-With electric mixer on medium-high speed, beat butter and cream cheese until fluffy, 2-3 minutes.  Reduce speed to low and add sugar, 1/2 cup at a time until all incorporated, scraping down sides of bowl as needed.  Add vanilla and salt and mix until smooth and creamy.

Deliciousness Part 1...

So in addition to my day job, I bake goodies for people.  Eventually, hopefully, I will be able to to do that as my full time job.  It is my passion in life and I never want to stop.  A friend of mine asked me if I would make her some red velvet cupcakes for her hubby for Valentine's Day.  To be honest, any excuse to make red velvet anything is fine by me!  She is one of those people who says she can cook, but who can't bake to save her life.  Now it's statements like that I just don't understand.  Maybe I don't understand because it comes so easy and naturally to me.  I think it freaks people out because it is an exact science, and if you mess just one thing up it will mess the whole thing up.  So because of that, I think people get nervous and just don't try.  But seriously, it is as easy as following directions.  If you can read and follow directions then I truly believe that anyone can bake.  Stick with me and I'll give you some more tricks to set you up for success!

So my red velvet cupcakes, I will admit, the recipe is not my own.  I do have many recipes that I have taken from places combined them with other recipes and made them my own.  However, I have not worked on a red velvet recipe as of yet.  I have to say that Martha Stewart has my favorite recipe and for now, I am just fine with that.  So whenever you are starting a recipe you obviously want to make sure that you have all of your ingredients.  So read through your recipe from start to finish and make sure that you have all the ingredients, and the time to do it.  Some recipes call for you to chill things for a couple hours/overnight.  Next, preheat your oven and prep your pans.  I can't tell you how many times I forget to preheat the oven then I'm waiting with batter or cookie dough!  Then you want to set up all your ingredients so they are handy and on the counter so you can just dump things in the bowl and go.  As you're mixing things in be aware in the recipe for mixing times.  Sometimes recipes have you mixing things together for several minutes.  Always scrape down the sides of your bowl!  There is often ingredients stuck to the sides that are not properly mixed in.  Then plop your batter into your pans, bake and wait for the magic to happen!  So here I go...

First I measured out my dry ingredients and put them into a bowl.  Now even though some recipes call for you to sift ingredients, I don't always do that.  The recipe will call for that so that you lighten the flour and make sure that no rouge particles end up in your cake.  Now the only time I will ALWAYS sift/wisk dry ingredients is when I am adding cocoa powder because it has a tendency to clump, and you don't want pockets of cocoa powder in your cake.  Also make sure you measure your dry ingredients with your dry measuring cups and your wet ingredients with measuring cups like the one above.

So, the sugar and oil go in the mixer, mixed until combined.  Add in the eggs and beat each in until incorporated.  Next is where the magic happens...

Add in your red food coloring.  Now I agree with Martha on this one, I like to use the gel food coloring.  Most of the time the colors are more intense then the liquid.  Also sometimes I find that you have to add so much of the liquid that it could potentially change the consistency of your mix.  You also see of to the side in that picture one of my all time favorite ingredients.  Vanilla extract, but not just any vanilla extract, Nielsen-Massey vanilla extract.  It's the best, but I'll leave that for another day.

Next go the dry ingredients, adding in 3 additions alternating with buttermilk.  This is important, you don't want to add all the dry ingredients at once because the batter will not be able to absorb it all at once.  Remember, scrape scrape scrape!  When you have a nice homogeneous mixture pour/scoop into your prepared pan

Doesn't it just look divine?!  I could eat the whole bowl of batter raw!  It is really awful, I am a huge batter eater.  But you have to taste everything before you bake it so you know it tastes good!  Then pop them in the oven for about 20 min or so and viola!

Red velvet heaven!  They are moist and delicious with just a hint of chocolate deliciousness.  Now because I don't need them for a couple days I will pop them in the freezer once they cool and they'll be fresh and ready when I need them.  Next up is the frosting which everyone knows is the best part of a cupcake.  Cupcakes are just a vehicle for loads of frosting!  Start baking and happy cooking!  <3

Trying to Stay Healthy

So....I like food.  No no, let me rephrase that.  I LOVE food.  I love to eat food and I love to cook food.  I like to read books and magazines about food and I like to watch television shows about food.  The bad thing about that is if I ate what I want when I want I would be the size of the house and very unhealthy, and I want to stick around for as long as I can.  So I do my best to eat healthy during the week so that I don't feel so bad when I indulge on the weekend.  It's not a bad system.  I don't know about everyone else but I am the type of person who when they go on diets and the diet says they can't have a certain food, such as carbs, that is the first thing that I crave.  I become miserable and unsatisfied and it is not easy for the people around me.  So I am a big believer in everything in moderation. 

So in trying to keep with that philosophy I try to come up with healthier sweet treats that I can eat that won't break me.  Since I love to bake I am always trying to take recipes that I love and make them healthier.  I have made muffins and cookies with much success, but that will be for another day.  What I was craving today was chocolate.  Now they say that chocolate is good for you and It is actually healthy to eat chocolate on a regular basis.  I say bring it on!  So I decided to make chocolate bark.  So I started gathering my ingredients...

I got my bittersweet chocolate, chopped my dried fruit (my choice was tart cherries and apricots), and I toasted my nuts (almonds and pistachios).  Toasting just brings out the flavor in the nuts, it makes them taste even more yummy.  I buy my nuts raw and store them in the freezer to make them last longer.  I toast them as I need them.  So next you melt your chocolate. 

I chose the double boiler route today.  Nothing fancy, just a bowl over a pot of simmering water.  You're trying to melt the chocolate gently so make sure the water is simmering because you can still burn your chocolate if your water is at a rapid boil.  Also you have to make sure that the bottom of your bowl is not touching the surface of the water, that could cause it to burn too.  Alternately you can melt your chocolate in the microwave.  Just make sure it doesn't get too hot.  Microwave it at 30 second intervals, stirring in between.  When it starts to get close, reduce it to 15 second intervals till completely melted.  Ok so where was I?  Oh yea chocolate.....

Mmmmmmm...don't you just wanna dive in?  So when it's melted, spread your chocolate evenly on a sheet tray lined with parchment paper and start loading it up!

I did two flavors with mine.  This half has the cherries and almonds and the other half has the apricots and pistachios.  Yummy!

 

Now just let it chill for about 30 minutes, I put mine on the screened in porch since it was so cold today, but the fridge is just fine.  When it hardens back up again break it into small pieces and you have a delicious homemade fairly good for you candy bar that you can snack on and not feel guilty about!

So simple and so delicious!  Keep cooking!  <3

A Rare Saturday Off...

Usually I am working on Saturdays, however thanks to Winter Storm Nemo I had the day off!  I spent my day exactly where I like to be....in the kitchen.  For some reason everything just goes away when I'm in there.  All my worries, stress, anxiety, everything just fades away.  I guess it's because everything works out when I'm in there.  Maybe it doesn't always work out the way I think it will, but it always works out  in a good way.  Whether I'm cooking or baking, the background just fades away and I can do whatever I want. 

So I decided since I had pretty much most of the day I would make chicken stock.  It is always a good thing to have on hand.  Usually I rely on stock in a box, which is very good, but I thought it would be even better to have homemade stock on hand for a rainy day.  One thing I have been doing is saving chicken carcases.  I know it sounds kinda gross and gruesome but every time I bought a rotisserie chicken, after all the chicken had been eaten I popped the carcass in a plastic bag and put it in the freezer.  I had saved up three at this point so that seemed like enough.  So there really is no recipe for chicken stock.  What it comes down to is whatever extra veggies you have on hand and some kind of chicken I used to use a fresh whole chicken but I found that it just didn't have that rich flavor that I was after.  So once I had my "light bulb" moment I have never gone back from the carcass.  So like I said I had three of them saved up.  As far as veggies go I put in a couple carrots, washed but not peeled, an onion quartered, a couple celery stalks from the heart with the leaves, and a head of garlic cut in half.  I also added a handful of parsley, a couple fresh bay leaves, and some whole peppercorns.  The last little thing I added was a piece parmesan cheese rind.  That's another thing I save.  There is just no comparison to freshly grated parmesan cheese.  Even when you are on a budget.  Yes it is a little more cost up front but it lasts for a pretty long time.  Then when you are done with the cheese, pop the rind in a plastic bag/container and put it in the freezer.  Any time you make soup, stock, tomato sauce, any thing that could use a little extra something, just pop it in and it just melts and imparts and delicious salty/nutty flavor.  So, where was I.....

Oh yea, after all the goodies went into the pot, I covered everything with water.  Just to give you an idea, I am using a 12 qt stockpot.  I let it come up to a boil and then simmer it uncovered for 2:30-3 hours.  Every once in awhile you have skim the scum/foam that accumulated on the top. 

This is a good thing to make when you are going to be in the kitchen for awhile.  It takes no time to throw everything in a pot and it just does it's own thing, requiring very little babysitting.  Usually I'll take Sundays to just hang out in the kitchen all day and cook things for the week, this is just something to add to the back of the stove.  Fast forward 3 hours......

Just look how rich and delicious that looks!  It is a thing of beauty.  Notice how much it has reduced.  You couldn't even see the second rivet in the first picture, and it reduced way past that.  That is one reason you want to simmer your stock/soup uncovered.  You want that liquid to reduce and concentrate in flavor.  So after it was finished simmering, I strained/discarded all the solids.  Now as far as that goes, you can just use a mesh strainer which is what I did and you will be left with a more cloudy stock (I'm fine with that).  Or you can line your mesh strainer with cheese cloth to get all the little particles out, then you will be left with a more clear stock.  Whichever you choose it will still be delish.  Now I have stock for soup, sauces, gravy, making rice, whatever I choose.  The best part is I know everything that went into it.  Happy cooking!  <3