Bone Broth Rookie

Here’s a photo of a barn at dusk on my drive home from work today.

As I write this, it is Wednesday night, Day 4 of my Bone Broth Fast.

Here’s the story: I started fasting on Sunday without knowing how long the fast would last. 5 days seemed like a solid amount of time, but it also seemed daunting, so I decided to just roll with this new brilliant idea and see how I felt along the way. On that first day, Sunday, I drank nothing but water. I didn’t even have a cup of black coffee.

If you think about it, Sunday is a good day to start a new habit, as opposed to Monday. There’s already enough going on on Monday’s, the pressure is real. You have to wake up early again, you can’t just do what you want, you have to plug in, the whole I Hate Mondays thing is still a thing according to my FB feed. Why add the extra pressure of trying to start a fast on a Monday? If you start on Sunday, then by Monday you already have a day under your belt, you’re already ahead! This is good logic. The drive for change is strong and I am ready.

After doing a bit of reading, it seemed the most important tool for my fast would be bone broth. Apparently the benefits of bone broth are many, including: it is rich in nutrients, boosts the immune system, and contains good things for the skin like collagen. It’s getting cold and dark around here in the north east, winter skin is creeping in.

I’ve never made bone broth before, but as it turns out, it’s pretty simple. I chose a recipe that is basically the same as chicken soup, but the broth is made from simmering a whole chicken, bones, giblets and all, for almost 18 hours.

To get started you need a crock pot. Then you need a whole chicken (preferably from a local farm, humanely raised, fed an organic/vegetarian diet). Think about it, you’re going to be ingesting the marrow of this animal, you want to know how it lived and what it ate. Then you need some diced celery, carrots, and onion.

On Sunday night, Day 1 of my fast, I offered a moment of thanks to my chicken and then placed him with the diced veggies and some water in the crock pot, and let it simmer on low over night for about 10 hours. The following morning, Monday, Day 2, I turned off the pot and went to work. That night I started it up again and let it cook for another 4. After 48 hours of nothing but water and a cups of black coffee, I was ready for some nourishment.

Having never made bone broth before, I might have made a rookie move in putting all the diced vegetables in the water with the whole chicken to cook. When it was ready after simmering for so long, the meat was plump and juicy and fell away from the bones but I found the task of trying to strain the broth and sift out the smaller bones while keeping the vegetables a bit of a challenge. I don’t like to waste food, so this took some time and a few extra pans and utensils.

Heck, I had nothing else to do. It was Day 2 of my fast and I was already bored. It’s amazing how much time we spend on food—thinking about food, planning food, shopping, preparing, eating, and then cleaning up after. I was also feeling somewhat energized after almost 48 hours of fasting and wasn’t in a hurry to go to sleep (this is unusual for me, I love to sleep) so I had time to kill. The soup smelled amazing, comforting, and toasty. But surprisingly, I wasn’t that hungry, and even though I was prepping a lot of freshly roasted solid food, I didn’t cheat on my fast.

After separating out the meat and the veggies and the broth and bones, I enjoyed a bowl of the warm broth and then went to sleep. I slept well.

So, net/net for Day 2: I drank a cup of black coffee at breakfast, water throughout the day, and a bowl of bone broth for dinner. For a majority of the day I felt energized, awake, and plugged in… like a fog had lifted. My clothes even felt looser. The lunchtime smells in the office tempted the senses only slightly, but overall my resolve was strong. I felt ready for Day 3.

P.S. Happy Birthday Mom.