At least we'll be nourished

That 99 cent per pound chicken was no joke. 
But there had to be a catch.  The catch was it was "split breast with rib."  But that also meant that the poor unhealthily-raised and mercilessly factory-murdered Tyson chicken was ever-so-slightly closer to it's original natural state, and that made me feel a little better for not caring about the first part (unhealthily-raised-murdered etc).  I'm quite happy to pull off a little skin when it gets me meat at dollar menu prices. 

But the awesome price also meant it wasn't even worth the effort of getting out a cutting board and separating the chicken breast from it's ribsI threw about two pounds of chicken into the crock pot with two cups of vegetable broth.  In a few hours I was dismantling that juicy goodness with ease - seriously easy - there was a ton of meat and just a few ribs! - and had a lovely pile of chicken breast.  Half of the batch went into a rather concentrated base for chicken soup to be frozen, and the other half went into a giant bubbling cauldron of taco soup. 

I froze three quart bags of "chicken soup" (copious amounts of chicken with a thicker broth base with carrots, onions, and spices, with each bag duly labeled "Add broth and noodles/rice!"), three quart bags of taco soup, and four quart bags of homemade refried beans.  These were added to an already frozen food stash including 2 quarts worth of taco meat with black beans, three meat loaves, a buffalo chicken dip, and a few bags of Johnny Marzetti that I actually am going to give away because we can't eat the whole wheat noodles in it anymore. 

There were shadier items found in the recesses of our basement freezer... some Onam 2010 avial, which may or may not be edible.  Virgin chocolate ice cream from the "oh my goodness Saby go get ice cream!" panic that took place about 10 minutes before Elena's 2nd birthday party.  (note:  she's now well past three)  Lots of frozen hot dog buns - why?  Some of that awesome Sam's Club frozen salmon - score!  And a few shady batches of old meatloaf that I'm currently slacking out in the fridge upstairs, in order to sniff and see whether they'd make a passable soup meat...

I thought I was way the hell behind in every form of preparation, but maybe it's not so bad.  We'll at least have some food.