Recipe: Stewing hen meat and bone broth in one Crock-Pot

A stewing hen is a retired egg-laying chicken that no longer lays a lot of eggs. Gourmet cooks really rave over broth ("stock") from stewing hens. If you buy your eggs direct from a farm or an urban chicken-keeper, you may be able to get stewing hens, maybe even at a decent price. You might even be able to get the original owner to butcher it for you, as in the Joel Salatin model. Or you can learn chicken-butchering on your own, as I did. There are great YouTube videos to help you learn.

I love to cook in a Crock-Pot®️. Because it cooks stuff on its own for hours and so I can go outdoors and do chores like hauling manure from where it was originally crapped and where I want it now, usually the compost pile.

I have made bone broth many times. I save my chicken bones when I cook chicken, and when I have enough bones, I make bone broth. Note: I don't salt the broth when I make it. If it cooks down enough, it may end up too salty for me. So I plan to add salt later when I use the broth.

I put the dead, plucked, eviscerated, cut-up chicken into the Crock-Pot, add water to cover, and then cook. I think I started on high for an hour and then switched to low. I thought it would take 6 hours or so, but I kept testing with a fork. I think it took about 24 hours until the meat felt tender enough. I then removed the chicken into another pot, let it cool enough to touch, and then picked off all the meat and put it into canning jars. Since I planned to freeze the meat, I put a little of the broth from the pot into the canning jars.

Then I put the meat-free bones back in the Crock-Pot, and let it cook another 24 hours. Then I strained the broth through a strainer, and put it in one-quart canning jars. I put it in the refrigerator overnight. The fat rises to the top of the jar and can be gotten out with a spoon or other kitchen implement.

The defatted broth goes into the freezer, except for one jar in the fridge for current use. The fat that you took out of the broth should be heated in a kettle and then put in an appropriate-sized canning jar. Refrigerate it overnight. At the bottom of the jar there will be a little broth. Make a hole in the fat with a knife, and allow the broth to drain from the fat. You can add the broth to your refrigerator jar of bone broth.

Chicken fat is known as schmaltz, and it is a lovely and delicious form of fat. Use it for cooking, for bulletproof beverages, and any other places where you might normally use butter.

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Fasting, day 4
I am on the 4th day of my fast today. I have done my HeavyHands walk with no trouble and more energy than usual. Yesterday, my third day, I had some mild hunger a couple of times. I usually banished it with a cup of plain tea. Finally in the evening I made myself a 'semi-bulletproof' tea, as allowed by Dr. Jason Fung in The Complete Guide to Fasting. It had 1/2 T(ablespoon) of MCT oil and 1/2 T of heavy cream. It wasn't as horrible tasting as I feared it would be, it was actually kind of GOOD. I feared my blood sugar today would pay the price, but it was 91 this morning. My weight was 187.0, so I lost a little weight.

Since I have read that the first 3 days of a fast are the hardest, and therefore if you fast three days you might as well continue on to 5 days, I have decided to go one more day after today, and resume eating on Saturday.

My big challenge today is that I'm going to visit my mom in the nearby town of Menominee, because I need to shop at a grocery store in Menominee to get some Amish-raised chicken and some Kerrygold butter, and I need to take some stuff to donate to Goodwill. My mom is uncertain about the fasting thing and may tempt me to get off the fast early. But I've got to stop doing what she tells me to do!