It's been a crazy couple of weeks!

I'm bad at this.  At blogging, I mean.  Something will happen to me during the day and I'll think to myself, "Oh man, I should totally put this on my blog!"

But then I get distracted by funny pictures of cats.  C'est la vie.

Anyway, I'm on the second phase of my diet (still), and my weight is holding pretty steady!  It'll fluctuate from day to day by about a pound, but I'm still hanging out around the 20 pound mark!  *happy dance*

So now, I'm going to start posting about some more every day stuff, like my crafting and cooking exploits.  I'm not claiming to be Betty Crocker or anything, but I *am* making my own chicken stock today.  Go me.

A while back, Matt had a craving for rotisserie chicken, so we bought one.  (Note: by a while back, I mean a few days ago, not a few weeks.  Don't worry, I didn't just pull a mystery chicken out of the black hole that is my fridge and go "That looks okay, right?  Yep!  Into the pot."

Anyway, this is one of my favorite types of cooking - the throw-as-much-stuff-as-you-want-in-a-pot-and-see-what-happens method, aka "just add some garlic, it'll be fine".  Sort of like how my grandma makes her fantabulous gravy, except minus all the knowledge and experience :)

Take what's left of a rotisserie chicken and throw it in a stock pot.  Well, don't throw it, place it.  You don't want chicken goo all over, even if it is cooked.  Then add water to cover the chicken.  Chop up some vegetables and dump them in - celery, onion, and (of course) garlic went into mine, and if I'd been thinking I'd have picked up some fresh herbs at the grocery store to add.  I also added some sea salt for good measure.

The "Icky chicken stuff"

Bring it to a boil then drop it down to medium or so heat and let it simmer for a couple hours.  Then strain it into a bowl to remove all the "icky chicken stuff" - that's the technical term for it - and return it to the stock pot.  Ta-da!  You now have your very own chicken stock!  Bonus: my apartment now smells fantastic.  I wonder if anyone has made a chicken stock candle or air freshener?  I don't know about normal people, but Realtors could totally use it to make homes seem homey-er.

I'm going to reduce it a bit because there's a lot of liquid and I don't have a convenient method of storing it, but now I need to come up with a way to use it!  Any suggestions?  I know it won't last long.