The "Chickens" of My Labors!!

Well yesterday, I finally did it! I canned my chicken! It is a very long story. A year ago, my friend said that I could borrow her pressure cooker to be able to can my food. She talked me into cannning chicken and how much she loved having her chicken in her storage unit. So I hopped right over to Macy's and bought 40 lbs of chicken when they had their sale.

When I called my friend to get together, she found out she was pregnant and was not feeling well. I certainly did not want to bother her, but now I had 40lbs of chicken in my freezer! So I waited a little while and months later I called her to see if I could just borrow her pressure cooker and she would not have to show my anything. I would try and figure it out on my own. I explained that Brian was not happy about the chicken sitting in my freezer for 8 months and I wanted to get this out of the way. She said she would call me back when she was ready to let me borrow her pressure cooker. Well, I never got the call.

So last January, I bought my own pressure cooker and when I pulled it out of the box, I was overwhelmed. I slid the box back in my pantry and wanted to pretend like I still did not have the item. Brian repeatedly asked me when I was going to take care of that chicken and I would wiggle my way out of doing it. It was getting to the point that I was having nightmares. Some huge emergency would break down and we would have no electricity and the chicken in the freezer would go bad and Brian would give the look of "if you would have taken care of this, we would not be starving."

So the last week I got a bug in me and I have been focusing again on our food storage. I finally bit the bullet and pulled the chicken out of the freezer to allow it to defrost. This is do or die time.

Yesterday morning I started pulling the chicken apart and had a complete realization of how much 40 lbs of large chicken breasts were and I wanted to give up. I had a whole story planned out that the chicken was freezer burned and it was bad and because I got the chicken for so cheap, it wasn't a real loss. And then I would run to Sam's Club and buy the canned chicken. And then I realized I was on a budget. No Canned Chicken! I just couldn't turn back now. This was going to be a really long weekend of chicken. I had to cut it all in small pieces, bake it, boil the chicken broth and then place them in their jars. Once it started cooking, it didn't take that long. The grossest part was all of the chicken juice and blood. I'm glad I am not pregnant. I did not want to touch the pressure cooker without Brian there, because if I blew up the house, then I would be in bigger trouble. Once I got it in the cooker, it wasn't bad at all other than I was stuck to the house for 9 hours. So, here you go! 24 Quarts of Chicken!



Next on my list: Strawberry Jam!