Gluten free Inside out Tacos

In a previous post I talked about making chicken stock from scratch. In that recipe, after the bird had cooked, I removed the meat from the bones before returning the bones back to the broth for longer cooking. The meat was saved for dinner that night. The chicken I had used was an older bird before she was put in the freezer, so her meat needed to be boiled a while before ready to eat, otherwise the meat is too tough.

Inside out tacos are super easy and quick to make, especially if the meat is already cooked, like what I did here.

In the red bowl is the chicken meat seasoned with cumin, ground coriander, salt, and pepper.

In the pot is my black beans cooking down.

To make the taco 'shells' you take the larger outer leaves of romaine lettuce, the big ones and the curved ones work nicely, but leave the really small inner leaves as they tend to be #1 small, and #2 bitter. Wash the lettuce 'shells' well and let dry.

Lastly I shredded some Cheddar cheese and got out the sour cream.

I layer it with beans, chicken, sour cream then cheese but that's just me. You could also cook up some other veggies like bell peppers and add those in.

It's a fast, easy, and tasty dinner.

Chicken stock from scratch

One thing I love having on hand is chicken stock. I have that 'Better Than Bouillon' stuff  that I keep on hand, I like the beef, and vegetable  as well as the chicken  flavors (I've been meaning to try the mushroom but haven't yet and after setting up that link I saw a clam and lobster flavor, yum!).

But I really love having homemade stock on hand, partially because I love the fat content, the little golden puddles that top the broth. When someone is sick I use this broth to make them a soup,  I feel it works better than store bought, no matter how good the store bought is.

The last chicken from last summers butchering. I also had some scrap pieces  of chicken from when my dad gets a 50lb box of chicken breasts from the restaurant supply store, there tends to have  unwanted fat and tendons on some of them so we clean them up before dividing them into smaller portions and putting them in the freezer. We keep those scraps to make stock and gravy.

Here is the scraps cooking in my cast iron pot. I use this pot because of the wonderful caramelization  I can get with it. 

I just tossed them in the hot pan with a little olive oil and salted them. (Hot for a cast iron like this is Medium, you don't want to use the high setting with cast iron, it's gets plenty hot on Medium, trust me).

About half way done  before I  put in the water and the whole bird. I really want these pieces to get that golden color as much as possible.

What the bottom of the pan looks like after I took out the scrap pieces. (I cooled them and used them as dog treats. Waste not, want not and all that, Layla loved it)

This is just adding water and the whole bird to the pot. Look how golden it is already, and those puddles of fat, yummy. I let this simmer for 6+ hours total, refilling the water twice. The first time I took the bird out and  took off it's meat for dinner later that night, I returned the bones back to pot, filled it with more water and let it simmer some more. The second time I removed the bones and added more water, I wanted more broth than what was in there. When it was the right rich flavor I poured it into a pitcher to cool.

Any meat or other solids will sink to the bottom, the stock is in the middle and that gorgeous fat floats to the top. Once this was cooled I filled ice cube trays and put it in the freezer.  I like having the small cubes of stock to add to sauces and vegetable dishes. If I have enough stock I will also put it in large ziplock containers to go in the fridge, that way when I need to make soup I just pull it out to thaw or add some really hot water to melt it. I tend to dilute the stock with hot water so when I'm cooking it down I make sure it's extra strong so when I add the water it doesn't lose it's flavor.

Homemade Tomato Sauce

I miss summer.
I'm itching to start gardening again and have been planning it all winter, dreaming of warmer days and  green things growing. 

Last year was the first year I fully had a garden, before I helped my mother or had one or two plants that I looked after. Last year I learned a lot about gardening and have started expanding the gardening beds to allow for all the things I want to grow this year.

One thing I grew last year, and grew well, were tomatoes. Last spring all my starts died from a uncommon late frost. I was super discouraged (and not just because of the starts, last spring was rough on my family for a few reasons) and I didn't start any more seedlings. One of my mothers friends (who also works with my dad) heard what happened and donated all her extra tomato plants to us, she gave us 12 plants of different varieties, we had several orange and yellow cherry tomatoes, some marzanos, and some heirloom varieties.

Her kindness and generosity along with those bring green plants in the garden created an inspiring new start for us. We bought more starts from local farmers markets and a few from a chain store. Beans, broccoli, beets, eggplant, cucumber, zucchini, and Swiss chard took over the empty garden space. The tomatoes flourished and soon I had too many for us to eat (12 plants was a lot come to think of it lol) our friends and neighbors shared in our bounty but we still had a surplus of tomatoes. 

Tomato love!

I learned last summer that you should pinch your tomato plants once they get as big as you want them (pinching off the new growth), otherwise you end up with a tomato forest and it take longer to get tomatoes because the plant is still focusing on growing instead of ripening the fruit (I would of had even more tomatoes if I had pinched them so it was kind of a good thing that I didn't)

This was one day of harvest, some days it was more, some days less, but this was a normal amount.

What to do with all  those tomatoes? Make tomato sauce of course!

I was naughty with this batch and used a bulb onion instead of leeks, I also minced some garlic.

After letting that saute in some oil I added the tomatoes to cook down.

Normally you blanch the tomatoes first so you can remove the skin but with these cherry tomatoes I kept them on.

I added a little salt to pull out the flavors and then I took the emulsion blender to it to chop up those skins. Later in the  summer, when I was harvesting the last of my tomatoes I made more tomato sauce, separating each kind of tomato into groups. The cherries, the marzanos, and the Heirloom all made different tasting tomato sauce. Out of all of them I liked the cherry the  best, even though marzanos are in the tomato category for sauce making and cherries are not.

I canned these sauces and have been enjoying that taste of summer all winter. It was the first time I've ever canned anything, I've always watched my mother can things but never took the plunge myself. I am now collecting jars and lids so I can can more next year.

I cooked down the Cherry tomatoes to make a paste (on the sides) and kept the marzano/heirloom a sauce (in the middle). There are what I had left by January. It was a great way to taste summer again after all the cold gray day of winter.