Getting the Most out of It

Does your dinner ever begin like this?

In my homemaking experiments I have been amazed in how many meals I can stretch a single broiler/fryer chicken into.  We are a family of five. Two adults and three children.  I can cut the two breasts off a chicken and use that much meat along with other things to feed my family dinner.  Then I can get a second dinner from the legs and thighs.  Then I can boil the rest of the chicken (on very low heat for at least an hour) and get 8-10 cups of chicken broth and another cup or two of meat picked off the bones.  That broth can be used for a least two pots of soup, and the meat can go in a pot of soup calling for chicken meat or even used to add to a separate meal.

Our home grown chickens haven’t ever given us quite this much, because they are smaller birds, but using our own chickens has encouraged me to find ways to use up as much of the animal as possible and to find ways to appreciate and extend it, rather than just devour it in one meal.  And I feel like I have.

Some people say that it is simply unsustainable to use animals as a source of protein and variety in our diets.  I just wholeheartedly disagree.  Like many things in life it simply depends.  It depends on how the animals are raised, how they are processed, how they are used, and how much of them are used.

For my family of five using one whole chicken every month (more in the winter less in the summer) is sustainable (especially when we aren’t afraid to raise our own) and it’s economical.  So, though it occasionally feel’s like I’m head cook in a Charles Dickinson era house, dinner around here sometimes begins with a whole chicken in a boiling pot on the stove.