Eat Me: Veggie Stock

I've got a bright and sunny breakfast recipe for you that I'm going to spell out to you in excruciating detail in just a moment. It's just perfect for Sunday morning, which for me is the day after I pick up my fresh produce at Jess's Farm Stand and so everything is still bursting eagerly out of the refrigerator, yearning -- yearning I say -- to be eaten.

Now, I'll get to the eggs in a bit. But first, I want to address the question of What Do I Do With All This Crazy Produce?

This is a serious issue, because I live in a teeny, tiny house, with a correspondingly small amount of storage space. And the Box O' Stuff I've been coming home with generally looks like this:

You guys, that is a LOT of produce.

So the first thing I do when I get home from the farm stand is to get down with the chopping. Time to cut some of this wacky greenery down to size, you know what I mean?

So here's the routine. Anything that I plan to eat in the next, oh, say, two days (so, like, tonight's dinner and tomorrow's meals and that's it), I'll chop up and tuck away into tupperware. Not only does it save time when I'm ready to cook, it takes up hella less space in the fridge.

Don't forget to fold up a square or two of paper towels and place it gently on top of your chopped up stuff before you put the lid on the tupperware. This will help keep your greens much crisper, much longer.

While you're happily chopping, dicing, or julienning, as the case may be, don't forget that everything you are touching is probably delicious, so don't throw out those ends!

Toss 'em in your biggest stock pot and make delicious veggie stock out of it! It is so easy and so great!

Just trim up your lovelies and toss all the leftover bits into that stock pot. When you're done, fill it up to the tip top with cold water and set it on the stove on high heat. When it's come to a boil, reduce the heat so that it stays at just about a nice, low, rolling boil. This is the kind of boil where the water goes blub... blub... blub blub... blub every few seconds or so, great fat air bubbles lazily rising up to the surface one by one, and then popping with a gentle moan of simmering goodness.

I usually like to throw in a few flavorful favorites, too, just to balance out the scraps and ends and roots that make up the bulk of what's boiling its merry way away on the stove. Like one whole vidalia onion (skin and all), a sweet potato, all diced up pretty, or a couple of lengths of seaweed, if I've got it lying around.

You don't have to be fancy. But I do like something sweet in there, and either a sweet potato or turnips or a really sweet onion seems to do the trick just fine.

Simmer the whole mess for about an hour or so, then turn off the heat. Once it's cool, pour it through a strainer into a big old container (maybe a smaller pot or a giant mixing bowl). Stir it around for a bit, taste it, and add salt to taste. Try to stop just short of adding as much salt as you think it needs, since it will taste saltier the longer you let it sit with itself in the fridge.

Sorry for the blur. That was last week's stock, and it had the sweet potato in it, so I wanted to include it for illustrative purposes.

Here's this week's version. No sweet potato, because I already had some left over turnips in there.

Why bother with the stock? Well, for one thing, it would suck to throw all that good scrap away. For another, stock is always great to have on hand for cooking. Deglaze your pan with it when you're sauteing up your dinner, boil or steam with it instead of water, or just whip up a soup with it as the base.

I like to drink it -- as a warm beverage -- when I've managed to overdose on coffee once again. Which is pretty much every day. Pour it out into a mug and microwave that baby for two minutes. Delish.

This stock will stay good in a sealed container for about a week.

Now, are you ready for some eggs?