Adventures in Stock Land

<in Julia Child's voice> You start with the vegetables (celery, onion, carrot, garlic).

Then you add a pile of sage that's been hiding in your freezer for longer than you want to admit.

And then you toss in a carcass of some sort (I believe it was fowl in origin), also dredged from the frozen depths of the freezer.

 Add more bones from cold storage. (I used a mixture of pork and chicken bones.)

Top it off with some more herbies (rosemary, parsley, and I think I tucked in a bay leaf or two), cover, and simmer for one hour.

Simmer, simmer, simmer.....

And last of all, you strain it through a sieve and then bottle it for the freezer. I like to preserve the chunks of veggie and meaty bits in the stock, but you can certainly strain those out. You could also use an immersion blender to puree the larger chunks a bit, but I think they add character to the stock. When you pour the stock in the jars, make sure to leave about 1/2 an inch to 1 inch of head space for the liquid to expand. And allow the stock to cool completely before you transfer to the freezer.