HOW I MAKE VEGETABLE STOCK FOR SOUPS AND STEWS
       
       I used to think that making stock from vegetable scraps was
       a waste of time. I didn't see the point of producing large
       quantities of a brownish liquid that would spoil before I
       could pour it into a dish. I tried to make it, sure. I used
       to store vegetable scraps in the freezer. Once or twice I
       simmer them into a stock. By that time they had accumulated
       flavors of freezer burn. The outcome was not enticing.
       
       Happily I have learned a better approach to vegetable
       stock. It's easy, really: I make the stock as I need it with
       scraps of vegetables that are immediately available from the
       current or previous meal. For example: my harira recipe
       requires garlic, onion, ginger, and carrot. Each of these
       things produces chaff: peelings and skins. So after
       preparing the ingredients I throw them into another pot on
       the stove, boil them with water, and pour the resulting
       stock into my recipe. The outcome of this approach is two
       fold: I feel good about extracting more nutrients from the
       ingredients, and I make a meal that's just a wee bit
       tastier.
       
       Of course, the implication here is that any scraps
       accumulated from a recipe that doesn't need a stock get
       binned. That's true and I'm fine with that. I was binning
       them before anyways, now I just bin them a little
       less. Maybe someday I'll go back to freezing scraps, or find
       another clever way of integrating them into my cooking. For
       now, I'm happy with this small improvement in my kitchen.