To Thine Own Self, Be Food

In a search of posts on this blog, I discovered I've blogged about chicken stock at least three times.  I've mentioned it several times beyond that. It seems...important, then? I'm usually a big fan of doing a whole chicken in the crockpot with my aromatics and a lot of water and making my stock that way.  It's certainly much easier. But, upon finding a ziploc bag of turkey bones and such in the freezer (saved since Christmas), I opted for the old-school top-of-the-stove method. 1. Find pot. A big one. 2. Empty baggie of picked-over turkey bits into pot. 3. Cut up three or four carrots, throw them in (leave the skins on, people!) 4. Repeat #3 with celery (which I'm ashamed to admit I did not have at the time). 5. Quarter a couple of small onions and get them to the party. 6. Add a few bay leaves and peppercorns. 7. Cover the whole lot with water. Here's the excellent thing about stock.  You definitely have to do steps 1, 2, and 7.  Everything el...

 R-r-r-r-r-r-apini! Whenever I come across some unusual piece of produce not often seen in these parts, I don't hesitate to snatch it up.  Buy first, recipe later...is what I say. I've bought enough kale, spinach, parsley, etc., to know that this bunch of greens was none of those things.  And so without further ado, I snatched these up. At home, research informed me that rapini is actually marketed more frequently as broccoli rabe...and that, I'd heard of.  But, I'd never fixed it. Until now. As it turns out, broccoli rabe is much less like broccoli, and more like kale.  I originally thought I'd sauté it with garlic and olive oil and throw it in with some farro for a nice side dish.   Alas.  I've been laid rather low with a cold the past  couple of days.  The farro thing never quite came to fruition...just didn't have the energy.  But - soup.  Yeah.  Just the thing for a cold, right? Modifications on...

Have you ever heard that old adage that Ignorance is Bliss?  Better off not knowing?  If you knew then what you know now? Etc? Tonight is an instance where knowledge is NOT power, it is a burden...and the Internet is a curse. Q = Quinine. Quinine is a herbal substance and it's what imparts its bitterness to tonic water...tonic water being a popular mixer for spirits.  The classic gin & tonic, vodka tonic, and about a million other combinations that would be amazing. However, did you know quinine used to be a treatment for malaria?  And babesiosis...that weird disease the nurses ask about when you give blood (fyi, a disease transmitted by parasites like ticks - gross!)  These days, we've got such amazing advances in modern medicine, quinine is no longer Top of the List...only as a last resort, says the World Health Organization. Because, as it turns out, quinine is one of those medicines that have a myriad of side-effects that seem a whole lot worse...