So Sunday was spent finally baking down our pumpkins, and, since I won’t be making a turkey for Thanksgiving, making vegetable stock.

I started out working on the stock, since it cooks for quite awhile.

First, I chopped a lot of vegetables. Everything gets soaked and washed in vinegar. Just to be safe.

Onion and carrot and celery make a good base. Everything is coarsely chopped, and the advantage of stock is that it is best when made with old vegetables and the other odds and ends you probably don’t want to eat. So I got to use the carrots I found in the bottom of the fridge.

I also added leeks. And since it’s stock, the green tops are best to add. The main part of the leek will be used in potato soup.

I also got to use herbs from my garden–probably the last time this season.

So add the herbs, along with salt, pepper, and olive oil. Dump into a large stock pot with cold water. Turn the heat on relatively low, then ignore for hours and hours, stirring occasionally. I added more cold water after taking this picture. This is going to make an obscene amount of stock.

After everything (except the carrots) is soft and squishy and the stock smells like stock, remove the vegetables. They get dumped on the compost heap. I usually strain the stock several times.

Then it goes back in the pot and once I’m sure it’s hot enough that no bacteria are floating around, it gets decanted into 4 cup containers.

The containers go into an ice bath to cool quickly. There was a lot more ice when I started, but 36 cups of stock will melt ice relatively quickly. Seriously, you want to cool things fast, because a slow cool allows for bacterial growth. And you want it to be cool before it goes into the fridge or freezer, otherwise it will heat up the contents of those appliances, again creating a possibility for bacterial growth. Which you really don’t want.

Once everything is nice and cool, the stock goes into the freezer.

After that?

I sat down and put my feet up.