Homemaking Tip – Food Pod

            Ande and Joe put a food pod in my Easter basket.  It’s the handiest thing.  Ande and Joe said they stuffed theirs with a rotisserie chicken carcass and vegetables then dropped it in boiling water to make a wonderful and clear broth.      

            I couldn’t wait to use my food bag, so a few days after Easter I stuffed it full of grisly ham and bones, onions, and celery and dropped it into a pot filled with beans.  The beans and bag simmered away.  When the beans were tender, I pulled out the yellow food pod and, instead of being left with little white beans floating in green celery slime and chunks of ham cartilage, had a beautiful pot of beans swimming in their own juice.  I fed the mushy onion and celery to the chickens and added bite-sized pieces of diced ham to the soup.* It was not only good, it looked appetizing. 

            Besides being handy, the food pod doesn’t take any storage space, either.  It just wads up in the utensil drawer with the cheese grater, stirring spoons, can opener, and whisks. 

           

*I add leftover ham gravy to the beans for more flavor, but this time I added the leftover mashed potatoes, too.  It gave the soup a fuller flavor.

**You can get food pods at Target or Amazon.  They are described as a "modern silicone cooking vessel."    It is what it is, no matter how they sell it - "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" - it's a handy bag for cooking food.