One of the things I can’t eat on my wonderful new diet is onion. And I have found that you can’t buy stock that is onion-free. As my wonderful mother-in-law said, ‘You can’t make stock without onion, darling!’ But I have to try.
I have found that if you buy some chicken frames (very cheep, sorry, cheap) and use a variety of salicylate friendly vegetables and a bit of salt, you can make a very passable stock without onion. So that’s what I do. I take the frames and boil them for a few hours with some veggies and then strain it all out and freeze it in containers that hold about two cups each. Then when I want to make a risotto or soup or some such thing, I have friendly stock to do it with.
On Thursday last I made soup and used up the last of my stock supply from the freezer, so today I went to the supermarket and bought some chicken frames and some leeks and used the leftover soup veggies and put the stock on to simmer. I just tipped the frames in, added the veggies and the water and some salt and simmered for about six hours.
DH made an awesome pizza for dinner. Did you know that pizza can be good without tomato paste? It was amazing! Then DS and I cleaned up the kitchen. Then finally it was time to strain and store my stock. I had filled up about six containers with lovely amber fluid when I finally realised that the chicken frames had come packed with one of those plastic absorbent things in the bag. I had totally missed it. And I had cooked it thoroughly for several hours! Disaster!
All of the stock has gone down the sink. Quite a waste I know but I couldn’t bring myself to eat it. Not anymore.
At one stage in my life this failure would have been devastating for me. The waste of time, of food, and the obvious fact that the failure was totally my fault. I can easily imagine myself crying over a situation like this a few years ago. But now, I just laugh, and share it with you all hoping that you can have a good laugh too. It’s a disaster, but it’s hilarious. Especially that I didn’t notice at all until it was far far too late.
One of the major things that has taught me to take life a little less seriously has been having children. The children taught me that perfection was not necessary in order to be loved. That you can love unconditionally and be thrilled with someone for trying, even if the effort ends in disaster. I hope I would have learned this lesson eventually anyway but I believe that having children helped me so much in the learning process.
So this mothers day I just want to say how grateful I am for my children, and all they have taught me. And for my mother and mother-in-law and how much they have taught me. I am very aware of how fortunate I am to have easily brought children into this world, and such awesome kids at that, and to have such a loving and caring mother and a mother-in-law that is such a good friend. I know that others have it so much harder – have lost children or are unable to conceive, or have lost their mother, or have horrible relationships. I know that mothers day can be extremely difficult for a lot of people. I don’t want to make life harder for you.
I just want to take a minute to say how grateful I am for the blessings in my life, especially the blessing of being able to laugh at failure. And the blessing of being able to head to the shops tomorrow, buy more chicken frames and start again.