New Foods

We have an almost-5-year-old who is, shall we say, limited in the food variety category. Despite requests, pleading, bribing, begging, you name it, there has been very little improvement of this. So you can imagine my glee yesterday when I heard, "Give me something new," in response to my question, "What do you want for lunch?"

I heated up a pint of the beef and barley soup, a favorite of our 8-year-old.

"That's not what I meant, Mommy."

After 4 very reluctant bites, the rest of the bowl went to the older sibling.

Chicken and Root Vegetables

Yeah, I know. Another soup. For the record, I'm bored with them, too. But I don't really have a lot of options right now. We have tons of jams, there's not really anything to pickle that's fresh from the farm, and we really should be eating what we have stored up. Which we're trying to do, but there is a LOT.

So, here were are. With a roasted chicken and a need for more chicken stock. I was down to my last 2 pints! For the stock: the leftover chicken plus the bones, 6 pts. of water, 4 ribs of celery, 4 carrots, 1 onion, salt, peppercorns, and a bay leaf. After removing 5 pints of stock (20 minutes, 10 lbs of pressure) I separated the meat from the bones, removed the peppercorns and celery, then returned the meat to the pot with:

the rest of the stock (about 1 pt.), with carrot, celery, and onion bits
4 pts. of water
3 parsnips and 1 more carrot, scraped and chopped
1/2 of a large turnip, peeled and chopped
2 potatoes, peeled and chopped
kosher salt
thyme
(4 quarts, 10 lbs pressure, 90 minutes)

It's actually very sunshiny: white potatoes and parsnips, yellow turnip, and orange carrots in a bright yellow broth.