But I am proud to say that I put the effort in this week, to really get these bones ready-for-science-project clean! Not that I intend to use them for a project of any sort.
Recently, I've been able to get 3 good meals from a whole chicken for our family. This time, I was able to get 4 entire family meals from this one whole chicken, two nights of chicken and gravy,
one night of very chicken-y soup,
and this Club Chicken Casserole, in the freezer right now, to be used for an easy on me, Sunday supper this week.
After slicing and pulling as much meat as I could off the carcass, I simmered the bones for a couple of hours, and was able to pick another full cup of meat off, even from the backbone area. I find that if I hold backbone pieces, loosely in my hand, the small bones fall apart from each other, revealing a small lump of meat between each pair of bones.
It wasn't pretty, and my hands smelled like chicken for hours afterward, but I was able to get an extra night's worth of meat to feed my family from this last of my whole chickens. Pretty satisfying.
I think that knowing this was the last of our chickens from the freezer, really gave me the impetus to glean as much from this one as possible. Do you feel that way about things, ever? It's the very last of something, so you try and get the most from it?
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