I spent all day in the kitchen...

I feel like I've spent all day in the kitchen. I've rendered another chicken carcass down into stock, made home-made pop tarts with the girls, and started a batch of ham & lentil stew, using the leftover Christmas Ham bone. We go throught that stock fast.

The pop tarts were dry. We need to figure out how to make the filling more moist, and maybe add a little more milk to the dough. But they were flaky and fat, although I think vegetable shortening may be called for instead of butter, or a mix of the two.

The stew, on the other hand, was awesome: just two big chunks of ham bone, a handful of frozen ham, a cup and a half of lentils, three carrots, one medium onion, and ane celery stalk, chopped and covered with water or broth. (I made chicken broth this afternoon, so I had some totally fresh and hot. Using a siphon hose allowed me to get under the fat layer.)

For lunch, I made a super-delicious crunchy salad of jicima, pineapple, cilantro, and raspberry vinagrette, along with two small taco of room-temperature chicken salad mixed with emulsified olive oil vinagrette, chopped cranberry, red onion, tomatoes. That was pretty damned good.

"The Open Road Still Softly Calls"

If this video does not make you cry, you are dead to me: