What I Learned This Week: #85

Monday, January 7 – Sunday, January 12

The Week In Stamina: Dry January, a month of refraining from drinking alcohol, has been tougher for me than years past. I blame the news cycle. Who doesn’t want/need a drink after merely glancing the headlines? Anyway, my path to 31 days of sobriety was eased by Pam, the bartender at Arnold’s who made me the first Shirley Temple I’ve had in years. She even used the shaker and strainer and I sipped it like it was the real thing.

Still called a Shirley Temple and still a wonderful drink!

The Week in Winter: We got a measurable, though less-than forecast amount of snow on Saturday. Gosh, the first snowfall of the season, especially falling on a Saturday, is so joyous. We also got a measurable and way more than forecast snow overnight, throwing Sunday plans into a bit of turmoil. The snowmen of downtown (these are from Saturday) are a delight, though finding materials to complete the project (facial features, arms) is challenging.

Structurally unsound, but the best dressed, longest limbed snowman I found.
Modern Art Snow Person
Hey! I’m a snowman on a table.

The Week in Beef Broth: It’s cold and snowy, the perfect time to make beef broth. That means taking beef bones and extracting the flavor. It means filling my apartment with the smell of cooking beef for the entire afternoon. Two big steps –

Bones-a-Roastin’
Bones-a-Swimmin’ (Includes chilling overnight, and straining into freezer containers which will you will have to imagine.)

Some good looking bones and token veges get roasted at 450 for an hour.
And they look like this.

Beautiful hot fat straight from the bone roasting pan.
Arteries love this stuff…so do kitchen sinks!

The bones and what not get to go swimming with some fresh celery, carrots, and onions
A couple hours later, broth screaming to be strained

Two of the 14 cups of fresh beef broth – this about to make its way into a mushroom soup.

The broth is like magic. It’s rich and full of flavor. There is no grocery store version even close. I’ll make various stews over the rest of the winter that will be better because of the broth. Worth taking a little time.

The week in Bonezzz: The side highlight of bone broth is it brings to light my thing for bones. I cannot explain it. Bones are cool. Bones freak people out and that’s interesting. I have a pork bone on my desk at work. You know what? People leave me alone. I may have been a witch, or a doctor (or a witch doctor…rim shot!) in my past life. I like bones.