In Which Mrpeenee Reveals the Depths of His Martha Stewart Fascination

I make my own vegetable stock. There. I’ve admitted it. I am not ashamed, I do not need an intervention, I make my own stock. As someone who cooks a lot, I generate a lot of kitchen scraps, flotsam like onion skins and carrot peels, the occasional exotica of sweet potato skins, all that. For years, I dumped them in a corner of the yard, just like my granny did, and built up compost. Incidentally, there’s a jasmine and a rose growing out of that patch which have responded to the mulch so enthusiastically that they are now collapsing the trellis they’re on. It’s always something.

But the stock, queen, what about the stock? Oh, yeah. For my birthday last year, R Man gave me a pressure cooker. I was thrilled, which in itself says something pretty Martheusian about me, doesn’t it? One of our friends mentioned how excellent the cookers were for making stock and I was off like a shot. Now, instead of composting, I keep the scraps in gallon baggies in the freezer and when they’ve accumulated to a volume that makes getting to the ice cubes challenging, I know it’s time for a new batch of Mother Peenee’s Homemade Vegetable Stock. Trademark.

I pulverize everything in the Cuisineart (whee! Extra appliances!) until it’s the texture of baby poo, shovel it in the pressure cooker, seal the lid and let the magic happen. Twenty minutes later I have delicious, delicious stock to make beans or lentils or rice or, because I’m a wild man, curry.

Of course, part of it is the thrill of using a pressure cooker. I’m sure all of us raised in the 60’s remember the rep these miscreants had as Killers of the Kitchen. Headlines like “Housewife scalded by exploding mashed potatoes” play out in my mind every time I use mine, but if Martha can live dangerously, so can I.

Next up: Starching your linens using the by-products of your yeast infection. Stay tuned.