Coming out just right

I cooked a big dinner at the house on Sunday, and since then have been trying to utilize all the leftovers, plus feed a few extra teenagers that have been hanging around the house. Sunday I roasted six chickens. Monday evening I picked over the carcasses, boiled them in two big pots, and ended up with almost 5 quarts of thick (as in so protein-rich it jelled overnight) broth, and made potato cakes from some of the leftover mashed potatoes. Tuesday I made chicken noodle casserole and chopped liver, and ate a big salad made from the leftover greens. Oh, and I have a container full of high quality schmalz, or chicken fat, because they were Matt Smith's chickens - usually you have to render the fat to get the water out, but this peeled off of the broth so well, it was almost dry. For frying potatoes in - yum.

But it was this morning where I felt like it was all working out just right.

I made a batch of nicely spiced vegetable soup (seasonings were paprika, cumin, coriander, fresh ginger and garlic, tossed in with the carrots and onions and celery), mixed up a batch of potato rolls and left them to rise, and shredded up the very last of the chicken meat and sauteed it in chili powder to make taco meat for Al. I had time for a long walk first thing, picked up John's film, fielded a couple of phone calls, and still made it to work on time.

I can still remember that feeling of well-being I had probably between 10 and 11:00 a.m. this morning, but it's hard to experience viscerally now, in my middle-aged, post-9:00 pm.-on-a-work-day-tiredness.