RecipeMuncher

No, it's not jewelry or coins or highlights in my hair.

No, it's not the sun, which is finally out after days and days of "should we be building an ark?" weather.

It's stock.

The other day we caught fish and among other things, made fish stock out of the heads and bones.  I have more of a story about all that, which hopefully I'll post today, but you know how that goes with me lately.  But for THIS post - the point of that fishing trip is - there are 17 cups of lovely fish stock in my freezer.

Seventeen cups.

And ALSO, at the moment, I have…let's see, 18 plus 34 plus 6…that would be 58 cups of chicken stock in the freezer also.

FIFTY EIGHT CUPS.

Plus about another twelve or so in the fridge, but I ran out of ziploc bags. 

24 of the cups are kind of a plain stock, and the 34 cups are a blend of MOSTLY a dark chicken stock and a bit of plain stock.

I made the dark by browning onions and carrots in a pan, and then browning all the wing tips and trimmed meatless bones and necks and bits and pieces of chicken we've been bagging up and tossing in the freezer for who knows how long, and finally putting it all in a big pot and topping it off with water, almost to the top of the pot, and then simmering it for hours and hours and hours.

My house smelled like a thousand roasting chickens.  It was wonderful.

Anyway, I bagged up some of the plain chicken and all the fish on Wednesday, and then the rest of it today (I made these stocks over the course of the past few days), and we'll use a little of it in the paella Bill's planning to make tonight.

Fifty eight cups of chicken stock.  Seventeen cups of fish stock. 

We've also got probably…10 or so cups of beef stock, and maybe a few cups of clam stock…in the freezer downstairs.

It may not be the color of it, but all that stock? 

That's GOLD.

The Gold Standard is an event put on by LA Weekly, curated by Pulitzer Prize winning food critic Jonathan Gold. Sample dishes from 30 restaurants hand picked by J Gold himself. Several Dig Lounge favorites will be there, Mozza, Animal, Chili My Soul, Drago, Hungry Cat, Providence, Lou, and Wurstkuche to name a few. Taking place on March 8th from 3-7pm at Smashbox Studios, the event is $60 for adults and $10 for kids. DJ and special guests will be announced soon. I’m sure this event will sell out, so buy your tickets soon. I’ll be there, so if you do end up going leave a comment!

…oh well, I cant promise that, but I can sure promise a gold medal if you run the Marathon along with me. The runners who ran with me last time did so remarkably well that I was astounded, to put it mildly. Their enthusiasm just blew me away and gave me the determination to keep myself on track for 15 days non stop!

So this time, I am challenging myself to keep at my Recipe Marathon for 30

It’s BETTER than gold.