Blessings, Darlings!
Being Green and Organic and witchy and Frugal, I like to re-purpose everything that we use at least one time. More if possible.
Tonight's re-purposing theme, in line with Mystic Trad/Amok oral tradition, is FIRST YOU TAKE A DEAD CHICKEN. So, the dead chicken - in this case, two backs, three drumsticks, and one thigh (all out of the freezer, bought on sale, etc) - will start off being breaded and fried. And eaten for dinner by the family - purpose #1.
Usually I re-purpose chicken bones into soup stock. I'm rather lazy on how I do that. Roast the bones after removing all edible meat. Take the container of dried veggie scraps - onions, celery, carrots - out. Put both in big pot, add water, some salt, a few whole allspice/pepper corns/cloves, a few mashed cloves garlic, a few slices of ginger. Bring to a boil, covered, for 5 minutes. Put in the hay box cooker
that I'm sure you've already built. Leave it there 12 hours. Strain. Put back in pot. Reduce by half. Done! Purpose #2
However, I don't like what the breading left on them after being dipped and fried does to the stock, and I've been after some vertebra for a while. So these bones are going to be re-purposed for magic. Purpose #2B
So I'll have to invest time removing tendons and ligaments from them all, and separate them all from each other. I may simmer them to do the latter, so the house is still going to smell really good. I'll probably have to bleach the vertebra to get all the gunk out of them, experience tells me. Then the fun begins!
Using a saw (I'm hoping I can find a friend with a band saw, ours died years ago), I plan on making 'round' slices of leg bones, maybe for beads. The vertebrae will certainly be used for 'beads'. If I had ribs, I'd be making Ogham staves out of them. Some bones will be kept for healing work - when a friend was hit by a hit and run driver, cracking vertebrae, I used some for that. Some might get kept for artwork.
I can't WAIT to get my share of our next steer - if no one else wants bones, I'm gonna have LOTS of fun.
All of this might also be used in a sideline online sales business, along with the runes and ogham I already make. I love having multiple income streams!
Showing posts with label hay box cooking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hay box cooking. Show all posts
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Simmering Stew Sans Smoke
Let's say that you built your Rocket Stove (http://fernsfronds.blogspot.com/2009/04/rocket-powered-cooking.html) (Someday I'll figure out how to make the words "Rocket Stove" into a link here. But not this morning) and want to cook beans or do a long simmer of a stew. You can get the pot o' food up to a boil on the Rocket Stove, but keeping it there at a simmer for hours is NOT a good idea. First, it would take fuel all day. Second, you would be there feeding it the fuel all day, and you have a life.
What you need now is some variation on a Hay Box Cooker.
Original Hay Box Cooker
Traditionally a Hay Box Cooker is just what the title says - a box made of bales of hay. Hay insulates the pot/cassarole dish placed inside, and it cooks away for hours. Nothing burns. Wonderful low tech energy efficient approach to cooking!
My Insulated Cooker
I don't keep bales of hay in the house. Such a box would take up too much room, husband would throw a fit, and the cats would use it as a scratching post and soon I'd NOT have neat bales, or a box, but I'd have hay scattered all over the house.
What I do is use old coolers. My big one is an old plastic camping cooker, now cracked and permanently dirty. My smaller one is a styrofoam cooler that we got years back when we ordered a 3 pack of REAL Chicago Style pizzas, shipped from Chicago, frozen. Along with the coolers I use a bunch of small towels.
Actual Hay Box Cooking
When preparing to cook, I take the empty pot I'm going about to fill and use over to the cooler du jour. I put an inch of towels on the bottom. I place the pot in. I fill the area between the cooler walls and the pot with more towels. Then I take the pot away, leaving the 'nest' behind.
Now I fill the pot with what's to be cooked. Cover and heat the stuff to a boil on the rocket stove, and boil for about 5 minutes. This pasturizes things, if not sterilizes things. Now pop the pot back into the nest in the cooler, top with more towels, and close the cooler lid.
Be Prepared to Wait
Hay box cooking is NOT FAST. It is TOTALLY a part of the Slow Food Movement. I've read that you need to assume it will take one hour of hay box cooking for every 5 minutes you'd simmer on stove or in heated oven. Maybe my insulation is better than that of those authors, but I don't find it takes that long. OTOH, I can let it go that long - nothing burns, nothing evaporates.
Meal, with rocket stove and hay box
How does hay box plus rocket stove cooking work for a meal? Let's look at a stir-fry and rice dinner. Let's even assume that the rice is brown rice, which takes longer to cook.
So, after breakfast, you set up the hay box for your rice. Then you bring the rice/water/salt to a boil on the rocket stove. Once it has boiled 5 minutes you place it in the hay box, cover, and leave it for the rest of the day. If you are using white rice, do this at lunch or later.
The stir fry gets started at whatever point of your afternoon/evening that you normally would, for we all know that it's the cutting and measuring sauce stuff that takes the most time. Stir fry in a wok on the rocket stove. When stir fry is done, take pot of rice out of hay box. Serve dinner.
That's it.
Maybe I'll post a stir fry recipe tomorrow. We'll see.
Catch you later!
.
What you need now is some variation on a Hay Box Cooker.
Original Hay Box Cooker
Traditionally a Hay Box Cooker is just what the title says - a box made of bales of hay. Hay insulates the pot/cassarole dish placed inside, and it cooks away for hours. Nothing burns. Wonderful low tech energy efficient approach to cooking!
My Insulated Cooker
I don't keep bales of hay in the house. Such a box would take up too much room, husband would throw a fit, and the cats would use it as a scratching post and soon I'd NOT have neat bales, or a box, but I'd have hay scattered all over the house.
What I do is use old coolers. My big one is an old plastic camping cooker, now cracked and permanently dirty. My smaller one is a styrofoam cooler that we got years back when we ordered a 3 pack of REAL Chicago Style pizzas, shipped from Chicago, frozen. Along with the coolers I use a bunch of small towels.
Actual Hay Box Cooking
When preparing to cook, I take the empty pot I'm going about to fill and use over to the cooler du jour. I put an inch of towels on the bottom. I place the pot in. I fill the area between the cooler walls and the pot with more towels. Then I take the pot away, leaving the 'nest' behind.
Now I fill the pot with what's to be cooked. Cover and heat the stuff to a boil on the rocket stove, and boil for about 5 minutes. This pasturizes things, if not sterilizes things. Now pop the pot back into the nest in the cooler, top with more towels, and close the cooler lid.
Be Prepared to Wait
Hay box cooking is NOT FAST. It is TOTALLY a part of the Slow Food Movement. I've read that you need to assume it will take one hour of hay box cooking for every 5 minutes you'd simmer on stove or in heated oven. Maybe my insulation is better than that of those authors, but I don't find it takes that long. OTOH, I can let it go that long - nothing burns, nothing evaporates.
Meal, with rocket stove and hay box
How does hay box plus rocket stove cooking work for a meal? Let's look at a stir-fry and rice dinner. Let's even assume that the rice is brown rice, which takes longer to cook.
So, after breakfast, you set up the hay box for your rice. Then you bring the rice/water/salt to a boil on the rocket stove. Once it has boiled 5 minutes you place it in the hay box, cover, and leave it for the rest of the day. If you are using white rice, do this at lunch or later.
The stir fry gets started at whatever point of your afternoon/evening that you normally would, for we all know that it's the cutting and measuring sauce stuff that takes the most time. Stir fry in a wok on the rocket stove. When stir fry is done, take pot of rice out of hay box. Serve dinner.
That's it.
Maybe I'll post a stir fry recipe tomorrow. We'll see.
Catch you later!
.
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