MY LE CREUSET, Oh how i love thee

Oh my birthday, ahem, not too many moons ago, I was presented with a le Creuset cast-iron pot that is almost 25 years old. But because it's so rarely used, it's almost new. Can you believe it??

With a gaping mouth and wide sparkled eyes, I felt like my dream came true. And then I reached out to it to hold it for the very first time and....almost dislocated my elbows. The bloody pot has to be at least 10 pounds heavy. It's a very large pot and apparently they don't make it that large anymore. Unfortunately I don't know how many quartz it can hold but on the cover, it says H. Model H, i think. I googled it and I can't find anything on Model H of Le Creuset's collection. Oh well, I have a Le Creuset now!!!! *grins*

Here's my orange honey:

Here's my orange honey in action, roasting vegetables for my badge of vegetable broth:

The the multi-purpose vegetable broth:
3 large carrots, cut into 1 inch pieces
4-5 sticks of celery, diced roughly
2 large onion, diced roughly
1 head of fennel and its leaves
2 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
pepper to taste

Method:
Pre-heat oven to 400 F or 200 C and prep your vegetables. Wash them and pat dry.
1. Combine all the vegetables together into a baking dish or (the Le Creuset ;)) pot.
2. Add olive oil, salt, pepper in and start mixing them until the vegetables are well coated.
3. Pop the vegetables into the oven and let it roast for up to 45 minutes or until corners of the vegetables are slightly brown.
4. Once the vegetables are done, take your pot out (or if you're using a baking dish pour every bit of thing out into a pot) and add 7 Litres of water. Bring it to a boil, cover and let it simmer for up to 2 hours.
5. Let it cool down and sieve the roasted vegetables out. Pour the broth into individual mason jars or containers. Keep in freezer until needed.

Broths like these are so handy and healthy. Just pop some noodles in, add your favorite ingredients in and voila, a nice meal. Or you can use it as braising liquid as well as to cook your favorite rice recipes. Roasting the vegetables before hand gives your broth a full bodied and rich flavor, see the beautiful rich brown broth in the picture? It's flavor, flavor, flavor! But you can definitely skip the roasting step during unbearably HOT summer days :)


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A lot of people grade the cambridge diet as the only idiot proof diet. The hoodia diet pill is good too and much better than its adversary, adipex.