I have been busy

Our local big chain grocery store (coughkrogercough) has 8 lb bags of chicken leg quarters on sale this week for $3.47 a bag, so I got 2. Keep in mind this is before I knew that I would have weekend guests (10 people total in my house). That is 16 pounds of chicken, counting the bones. So this morning I got up, started the coffee, started the laundry, and last night's dishes.

Then I proceeded to debone all that meat. I canned 8 pints. That is somewhere between 10-16 meals for us.

I threw all of the bones,skins and fat into a pot and added a couple of gallons of water and boiled it for the hour 15 the chicken was in the canner.

By this time, DH was home for lunch. I took a few of the bones out of the pot and scraped enough meat off of them to add to a box of stuffing mix (generic, for 89 cents) to have "dressing" for lunch.

After lunch, I strained the rest of the bones, skin, etc off of the pot of broth, skimmed the schmaltz off of it (got about 3 cups of that now in the fridge) and canned 7 quarts of broth.

Then I spent the next hour getting all the little remaining bits of meat off of the bones (did you know that the tiny bit of meat in the tail is white meat?) and with the rest of the broth, I am making up some chicken soup. I should have between 4 or 5 quarts when it is all said and done.

So...for $7 worth of chicken, I have at least 15 meals for my family.

Now I just have to clean the kitchen back up and take a shower before everyone gets here. But I have to get all of this done before the hand surgery. Dreading the 6 weeks of a cast.

I am beat.