I'm being all productive -- I'm making freezer vegetable broth. When I cook, if I have leftover bits and pieces of onions or celery or carrots or potatoes or something, I put them into a ziploc bag in the freezer, then when the bag gets full, dump the whole thing into a big pot with a bunch of water, cook it into broth, and then put the broth into 2-cup containers in the freezer. Usually works out to making new broth about 4 times a year. It's not much actual work, but the actual cooking part feels all frugal and productive. Plus, it makes my apartment smell yummy. This batch has a whole lot more scallions than usual, and an apple core that I threw in thinking it couldn't hurt.

That's a brilliant idea.

I got the idea from one of my mom's friends. My mother frequently tells us money-saving things that this friend did in her twenties -- making broth like this, storing ketchup bottles upside down so that she'd get all the ketchup from the bottom -- and then reminding us that this friend is now a millionaire. (Frankly, I think that has much more to do with who she married than what scraps of food she saved, but homemade broth, even twice-frozen, tastes much better than store-bought, and it means I can control the taste and the salt.)

Every now and then I do that -- but I need to label a container with something like broth fixings so I now what it is...

I wish I had enough Pyrex containers to indulge my plastic-paranoia, but those are way too expensive for the number of containers I use for broth. So I use the disposable ones for this.

(Also, considering some of the processed crap that I eat, I really can't be too concerned about a bit of chemical leaching from plastic containers. Once I stop eating some of that junk food, I'll feel a bit more justified in trying to avoid plastic.)

Oooookay, the rainy season's back. Just now. And then some. First rain of the year, and it's like suddenly the world is just made of water. Guess I might wait a little before heading in to work after all.

my mom just started working with the author of Drug Crazy to help with a mini-documentary about the fight to open a medical marijuana dispensary in her retirement community.

I put my broth in ziplock baggies.

Last one I made was vegetable. Maybe from Cook's Illustrated. It had a million ingredients, some of which I'd never bought before, but it smelt better than any chicken broth I've ever made. After I took out the veggie remnants I pureed some of them and had them as soup, and it was delicious. The broth is pretty damned good too.

It had a million ingredients, some of which I'd never bought before

like what?

Leeks for one. I also suspect exotic-to-me tubers. But I don't get around when it comes to non-tropical veggies.