Category Archives: Kitchen Tips and Tricks

Three Tips for Making Large Batches of Soup

I eat soup year round. When made with plenty of meat and vegetables, it’s a tasty and filling meal in itself. For a long time I only cooked enough soup for the meal we were about to eat. Eventually, however, I realized that making soup in large batches is much more efficient. Although you have to spend a bit more time making a large initial batch, your reward is several meals worth of pre-made soup ready to be pulled out of the fridge and simply reheated whenever you’re hungry.

I realize that a “large” batch of soup is a relative term.…

How to Eat a Quarter of a Cow Even if You Don’t Like the Taste of Beef

We have nearly finished eating our way through the quarter of a grass-fed cow that we bought last summer. The fact that we buy our beef in quarters is not remarkable, but it is perhaps a bit more unusual considering that I don’t care for the taste of beef.

Why buy a quarter of cow, then? Well, for three main reasons: Jesse enjoys beef; I think it’s important to have variety in our diets; and I believe grass-fed beef is a very healthy food. The result of all this is that I have long been determined to make beef a regular part of our diet.…

I Sleep with My Freezer

Jesse and I have a chest freezer in our bedroom. One of the big perks of moving to our new apartment is that we will get to store the chest freezer in our new second bedroom. I’m sure that having a freezer in a second bedroom is still odd to all of your lucky people who possess garages or basements, but I think it will feel like pure decadence to us.

Why We Have a Freezer in Our Bedroom

How did we come to have a chest freezer in our bedroom? Well, about a year and a half ago I was slowly losing my mind over getting things to fit in the freezer above our refrigerator.…

How to Remove Chicken Breasts from a Whole Chicken

How to remove chicken breasts from a whole chicken

For the last couple of years I have exclusively bought whole chickens. Mostly this is because my easily accessible source of pastured chickens only sells chickens whole. Based on everything I’ve read, however, I think buying whole chickens is also the most economical choice.

The only downside of switching to whole chickens was that I no longer had chicken breasts on hand to use for stir-fries, chicken nuggets or other dishes where chicken breasts really shine. Eventually I mentioned this to Jesse and he came up with this method for removing the chicken breasts prior to cooking the rest of the chicken.…

My New Glass Water (Kefir) Bottle: The Solution to Water Kefir Transport Woes

Possibly I’m the only one who has this problem. But in case there are any other sufferers out there, I want to share what’s working for me.

I love water kefir. On the days that I work away from home, I like to bring a few cups of water kefir with me so I can drink it during the day. I have always carried my water kefir in a quart jar topped with a white plastic lid. Unfortunately this did not work particularly well. No matter what I did, in transit the kefir would inevitably splash around and leak out of the jar.…