What Three Dollars Gets You

I bought a tray of chicken thighs for .88 cents a lb. I spent three bucks. From it I made:

-Enough shredded chicken filling for at least 50 tamales
-3 quarts of rich stock
-1/2 cup rendered chicken fat
-Cracklings

The only thing that got discarded was the Styrofoam tray the chicken came on. I felt very much like my grandmother today-and it dawned on me as I stood over the pot of chicken skin rendering out fat, that it smelled very much like her apartment (except her place always had the lingering odour of mothballs as well).

Tomorrow, I'll scrape any additional fat off the chilled stock, and then reduce it to about a cup of glaze (takes less room in the icebox).