Thursday, March 17, 2016

What do a spider and chicken broth have in common?

One of our favorite easy dinners is roast chicken.  Once thawed, put in a pan and seasoned, it just cooks itself.  Add a couple of side dishes like salad, steamed veggies, baked potatoes, oven fries, and dinner is done.  And when the meal is over I like to freeze the carcass in a plastic bag.  When I have time I take out whatever bones have amassed in the freezer and make broth in my big stock pot.  I like to get every bit of use out of my food dollars, and homemade broth is so nutritious and good.  And you can easily pull off enough meat to add back with vegetables and make a nice soup. 

I knew I had some bones in the freezer so I planned chicken soup into our week.  Yesterday I made the broth so that today's supper would be simple.  I pulled it out of the fridge, added celery, carrots, herbs and wild rice along with the reserved chicken, and set it on the stove to simmer.  Meanwhile, I set about freezing the excess broth that I didn't need tonight, for another day.  I have a box full of old jars and containers in the basement just for times like this.  Old hummus containers are perfect for broth and I also found an old plastic mayonnaise bottle to use.  I washed up the containers, filled them, and was just ready to stick them in the freezer……..when I noticed…….

On the lid of the old mayonnaise jar was some writing.  This is not uncommon in our house.  We often reuse the same freezer containers multiple times for different things.  I label the containers with a sharpie so I don't forget what they are when they are found in the depths of my freezer down the road.  Often when reusing a container I just scribble out the old contents and date, and add the new one.  I figured I would do the same thing today.  But this time the container didn't say something like….Apple Butter, September 2015, or Minestrone, January 2016. 

It said simply, "Nick the Spider."

I guess the former contents of this particular container had not been edible.  I called to Emily who was in the house at the time.  I showed her the lid…and she actually remembered Nick the Spider.  She remembered that he was quite large.  "I think he was a wolf spider."  Then she remembered that he had babies on his back.  Hmmmmm.  Maybe Nick the Spider should have been named "Nicole the Spider."  The kids often catch little critters and keep them for a day or two as "pets."  My jar, now holding my chicken broth, had once been home to one of these temporary pets. 
  
Did I empty out the contents?  Nah.  I had washed out the jar.  I took a quick picture for posterity and put all my chicken broth into the freezer.