Home sick, but cooking!

I'm staying home from work today with a sore throat (and I'm just really tired). On antibiotics already for a sinus infection, so I'm guessing that this is a cold on top of all of it. yippee.

Since I'm working from here today, I decided to use the chance to get my homemade chicken stock made. In the pot as I post is:

2 whole chicken carcasses with a liberal amount of meat still on them.
Giblets and necks from both chickens
1 1/2 onions
2 carrots
some celery-- I got a really leafy bunch, so I cut off the leafy tops for the soup pot and can then use the stalks for recipes and snacks.
handful of peppercorns
several cloves garlic, peeled and left whole
half a bunch of parsley

Working on getting it to a boil now, then it will simmer all day.

I've still got about a chicken and a half left of meat-- which was very tasty! I'll probably have a chicken breast for lunch or dinner. I plan on making a small pot of chicken and noodles... right now comfort food sounds perfect.

I've also got alot of pears left from the big tub of sugar pears that I bought last week, so I found a recipe for a chicken salad done with pears.

Plan to go to the store today or tomorrow and get:
homestyle noodles
head of bibb lettuce (nice with the chicken salad)
maybe some fresh tarragon for the chicken salad.
2 more chickens b/c they are on sale cheap and I have room in the freezer.

On the one hand, I'll be spending a bit more, but on the other, I'm working to not let food go to waste... to really stretch it into additional meals.

I'm really bad about buying produce and letting it go to waste. So here, I'm stretching that chicken and the pears into a dish I probably would never have gotten before, paying maybe an extra $3 (for lettuce and herbs) for a dish that will net me 4 servings or so.

Plus, I'm getting the stock, which means no need to buy that at the store. That's a good budget saver for me, b/c while I will get the cans of broth from time to time (like when they're on ESR at WAGS), I usually buy the cartons of actual stock, which are over $3/container.

The carrots and celery I bought yesterday will go into the chicken and noodles, which I'll probably freeze at least a serving of. So paying the extra for the noodles works b/c I'm multi-tasking the rest of the ingredients in the recipe.

I'm also saving my veggie scraps in ziploc in the freezer... When I've filled a couple bags, I'll make a homemade veggie stock as well.