No bake cookies (old fashion boiled cookies)

Tonight I decided to suprise my husband with something he is always complaining he doesnt get often enough.....no bake cookies :)  He loves them and has been hinting to our daughter that santa likes them (sneaky guy). So these take very little time to prepare, what is the hard part is letting them cool off enough to harden up and eat. This is a recipe that was given to me and I tweeked it a little to suit my husbands love of peanut butter in the cookies, it is not necesary to add the peanut butter if you do have an allergy though. It helps a lot if you premeasure your oatmeal and cocoa powder before starting. and have your baking sheet ready some would say it needs to be buttered but it is not necessary.


NO BAKE COOKIES (OLD FASHIONED BOILED COOKIES)

2cups SUGAR

1/2cup MILK

1 stick BUTTER
combine in a sauce pan and bring to full rolling boil and boil 25-30 seconds
then add
1tbsp PEANUT BUTTER stir to melt into sugar mixture

then add
4tbsp COCOA POWDER

2 1/2cups QUICK COOK OATMEAL

mix together until thoroughly mixed and then put in blobs (i love the word blob lol), onto baking sheet and let cool try not to bother them while cooling....I know hardest part. 

Chicken stock for Free?

Ok so, I raise chickens! And of course they are by no means free as nothing really is but you can do this without raising chickens and it still be somewhat free. The part of the chicken that makes stock worth its weight is the bones! The reason is inside these bones is marrow which turns into gelatin when it is cooked and gelatin is awesome for your immune system and makes for some tasty stock so the more bones the better and darker your stock will be.  After cutting up a whole chicken into the stuff you usually see in store like drumsticks and chicken breast you are left with what is essentially a carcass, which by the way i know that sounds like a dirty word to some people sorry, the carcass is perfect for stock. you can use the leftover bones from a rotisserie chicken if that is the route you wanna go but it wont be as tasty. I also save some of the scraps from vegetables just for stock. I save onion tops, and skins as long as they are not bruised and carrot peels and tops.  You can put all your veggie scraps into a ziploc bag and just stash it in the freezer until your ready to make your stock. Here is what I did I used two carcasses, and my whole bag of carrot and onion scraps, and addded water, thats it just let it cook a couple of hours then strain it through a strainer or even better a cheesecloth lined strainer.  Then refrigerate, now the reason you put it into the refrigerator is to remove the fat from the stock, when it is cold the fat will rise to the top and become hard.  So just skim the fat off and you have a healthy delicous stock!  You can freeze it in ice cubes or however you please, I like to can mine since i have a pressure canner (well a couple shhh...) and it only takes 25minutes at 10lbs of pressure for me to have 7 quarts of shelf stable stock Yes I made seven quarts just from scraps!! It is much better tasting than the store bought stuff too and NO SALT, you can always add that later when you cook with it. If you are on a budget this is the way to go these 7 quarts saved me around eleven dollars just on stock i would purchase during the year for just the cost of the lids for my jars which are around 2$ for a dozen.  Homeade is always better!!