I normally go through one or two cans of broth a year. This changed over the past year when I found other recipes that use broth - at which point I never seem to have enough. I really enjoy Tomato Florentine, but individuals within the household swore they hated "tomato soup" and wouldn't touch it. I used the _exact_ same recipe, only added more noodles and called it Gulash. Suddenly it was a big hit and everyone was eating it.
Chicken tetrazzini, chicken pot pie, etc.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/379280/ten_uses_for_swanson_chicken_broth.html?cat=22 and
http://culinaryarts.about.com/od/chickenturkeymore/tp/chixstockuses.htm have some great basic and exotic uses for chicken broth that are practical and will make things more tasty (plus MSG-free).
The more I started looking the less broth I had available. It's a good problem to have.
As for time, I agree - time is a big factor. However, I've yet to find someone who can genuinely put a price on the time I spend with my birds. Initially I was trying to do it as a "by the hour" fee. How much should I be paid per hour multiplied by how much time do I spend with the birds equals an additional cost. But that isn't a cost. When I am drawing, painting, or cooking dinner, I don't factor in how much time it took for me to make a meal or finish a picture. I don't sit down to a homecooked dinner, sigh, and realize that my $20 worth of time could have been invested at a restaurant, or that I could have bought a $100 painting at a store without having to do it myself.
It's not the same. Were I to factor in straight time, I spend 2-4 minutes per day in a broiler pen feeding and watering (a bucket of feed is dropped in the feeder - 30 seconds, the waterer is dumped, wiped and refilled - two minutes - then the time to walk to and from the barn). My cages are up off the ground, so the poo falls through the bars. Every few months I can go under a cage and scoop the waste out and use it on my garden (which doesn't count - an hour of scooping poo evens out buying compost at Lowes). Then if I put quail or chickens in a tractor and haul them around the yard, I'm adding more compost and getting rid of pests (weed seeds, grasshoppers, slugs, etc). What sort of fee do I put on that?
My extra time is all spent playing around, checking on everyone, holding my favorites, etc. I stopped putting a price tag on my time because, personally, I would rather be out in the barn than sitting at work. I may get paid more at work, but how is that worth it to me? Who here would prefer to be at work two hours more per day rather than spend two hours out with their animals?
Until I know how much I'd like to be paid for being at work rather than being in the barn, I can't set the price tag. As for butchering, 15 minutes to dress out a bird can be factored in (for quail, 5~ minutes per bird). I can factor it in as $5 and I'm still making out ahead on my processing.
If you won't eat guts, will you eat anything with the guts in it? I won't put liver in my stock, but I'll put the gizzard, heart, lungs, etc in there if I don't want to fry them. I got a new meat grinder for Christmas, so I may start making chicken sausage of some sort. Would you mix the innards into a sausage and eat them?
