Herbal Chicken Stock

Well, I did it!! After talking about chicken tortilla soup, I had to do it!

So here is what I did.

We roasted the chicken (a la Alton Brown).

We took everything he had us cut out (minus all the guts, I just could not bring myself to do anything with them at this time - I hope to get over my fear of the innards soon as I know I want to waste as little as possible), plus all the bones (which my husband lovingly took all the meat off for us to eat that night) and the drippings from the pan.

We then added carrot chunks, celery chunks (with leaves), onion chunks (with skin). Then we followed a recipe for Healthy Herbal Chicken Stock which will help us fight off colds and flu this winter season. They call it a tonic. :)

We have the CD Training Our Daughters To Be Keepers At Home (TOD-KAH). I have created a section for teaching on Herbs and this recipe is going right in there. I have also changed the books we will be using to teach her as I do not have the Sue Gregg books, nor do I want to get them. I have PLENTY of other books just as good that we will be using instead. PLUS, they will be getting hands on training in most of that now and while they are young. :)

The stock simmered all night long! Then in the morning, I made the condensed cream of chicken soup and used some to make the chicken tortilla soup for lunch and froze the rest of the herbal chicken stock and cream of chicken soup. Which is 8 cups of stock (which honestly is about two soups worth for our family), and about 3 cans worth of the cream of chicken soup.

Which brings me to a question. How do you freeze liquids without using plastic? Everything out there I read said to use freezer bags. I am hoping to move away from those. (Although with the success of using cereal bags around the freezer bags I am really happy and liking the ease of freezer bags, especially for things like frozen veggies.) But with soups I would really like to use something NON-plastic. Can I use canning jars? Anyone with any advice?