Once in a while, when I don't feel like cooking, I'll grab a roasted chicken from the grocery store deli and we'll have it for dinner along with some roasted veggies and rice, or a salad and bread.
Throwing the bones, skin and extra meat into a bag, I'll save it in the freezer for a few weeks and keep adding to the bag all the kitchen scraps from other meals: onion skins, carrot stumps, mushroom stems, pepper tops - any veggie scrap that would normally go into the compost.
When the bag is full, all the contents are poured into a slow cooker and topped off with water. Add a bundle of fresh herbs, like, sage, oregano, thyme and rosemary and set the cooker on low for about 8-12 hours.
I had set up the slow cooker this morning, and in the evening I had a enough savory broth for a lentil stew, with broth left over for another meal. The extra broth was poured into a quart mason jar and placed in the freezer.
Lentil Stew
4 cups chicken broth
14 oz canned, chopped, tomatoes
1 1/2 cups dry lentils
5 cloves garlic
1 sweet onion
2 large carrots
1 sweet potato
1 package frozen chopped spinach
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon celery salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
Bring broth to boil. Rinse dried lentils. Chop veggies into large chunks. Crush garlic cloves. Add everything to the boiling broth and turn down the heat to simmer.
Go read a book while the stew simmers for one hour, making the lentils and vegetables tender and delicious.
