I'm often moved by interconnectedness - how the water we drink may have once been peed out by Julius Caesar, or how we're made of supernovae remnants. I had a similar experience this weekend.

Two years ago, I took some fresh vegetables, herbs, water, etc. and made a huge thing of brine into which I put several whole chickens. One I cooked, the rest I froze. Over the next year, I took them out of the freezer and grilled them, broiled them, and roasted them, each time taking the carcasses and adding them to a bag in the freezer ("from whence they came").

A little more than a year ago, I'd finally used the last of the brined chickens and had a bag full of chicken bones and brined meat. To this I added more fresh vegetables, herbs, water, etc. and made a stock, which I then froze.

This weekend I took some of that stock and added it to the reduced hydrating liquid from some dried porcini mushrooms. It made an amazing sauce for my bacon and porcini pizza.

What a ride that chicken has been on!

Over the past few months I've been keeping frozen tomato sauce which I've been saving and adding to fresh tomato sauce and then refreezing what's left. I know other people keep such "master sauces" (not to be confused with a "mother sauce") as well. I know there are restaurants that claim to be using the same sourdough starter for a hundred years.

So what do you keep in your kitchen that just keeps on giving, and bringing those flavors that only time can impart?

I've had the same stick of butter in my refrigerator since 1973, does that count?

Sounds like a pot a feu, only you're keeping it in the freezer instead of simmering on the back of a wood/coal stove. I sort of do that with my duck fat tub in the back of the fridge, melting it and making a batch of confit, re- chilling the fat and removing that batch's jelly and continuing to reuse the fat occasionally until it has gone bad and has to be discarded. I suppose it would last longer in the freezer, but I never seem to have enough room in there, what with all of the containers of stocks and bags of peeled poblano peppers, and nuts, seeds, flours, bottles of lemon vodka and tons of other crap stuffed inside--it's a real Fibber McGee's closet. I envy people who have enough room for a separate freezer or second refrigerator.