christmas stuff

My day off was a fairly productive one. I bought the last few presents on my list. All of the presents are wrapped. And, the tree is up and decorated. Actually, the presents I ordered from Brian’s Rickety ol’ Furniture Shoppe are still on backorder. I don’t know why I keep ordering from that place. So, I guess I’m not quite done with my wrapping yet…

Jake and I had to run to Toys R Us this afternoon because he has a birthday party go to to tomorrow. I picked up a few other gifts while we were there so it was a successful shopping trip. I hate shopping in stores (I prefer the internet), but this went pretty smoothly.

Whenever I have a day off, I like to make something for supper that requires a little more effort than usual. So, today, I made my grandmother’s Meatball Soup (aka Italian Wedding Soup):

*** stock ***
4 1/2 pounds chicken backs
3 stalks celery
2 pounds carrots
2 medium onions
2 teaspoons black peppercorns
2 tablespoons salt
*** meatballs ***
2 pounds ground beef
2 eggs — beaten
1/2 cup bread crumbs
2/3 cup Romano cheese
2 tablespoons dried parsley
black pepper — to taste
*** remaining ingredient ***
20 ounces frozen chopped spinach — thawed

Place chicken in a large stock pot. Cover chicken with water. Add celery, carrots, onions, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 4-5 hours. Skim off the foam.

Once broth is done, strain. Either use a fat separator to remove the fat from the broth or refrigerate and skim from the top, once cooled. Put cooked carrots aside. Discard everything else.

Mix meatball ingredients. Roll very small meatballs. Chop the carrots. Bring the strained broth to a boil, add the meatballs along with the carrots and spinach. Simmer. Add more salt if needed. Cook meatballs in soup for at least 1/2 hour. Serve hot. Freezes well.

Heck, I even had time to make some homemade bread. It was a good supper, with plenty of leftovers. I can hardly wait for lunch tomorrow.