Re: gelatin

Actually it was just by chance I discovered it. I had cooked and eaten these pig ears and I felt amazingly good afterwards. So the following week I prepared pigs ears again, and bingo! Amazing feeling again.
And nearly the same happens with pig trotters. But not quite.

I need an awful lot of chicken wings and feet in a soup to get a similar effect. I say similar, but again certainly not the same as the trotters.
I think pigs ears are best and produce a special effect.

Powdered gelatin : I wouldn't use that, because most of the time it is full of MSG.

What I do is : Eat roast chicken (shoulder of lamb / turkey / etc) for lunch with fresh salad and potatoes; scoop up all the bones left over by family and
- put them in water + a few veggies + something acidic (lemon juice /tomato /dash of vinegar), simmer with a handful of brown rice (or potato / chestnuts / etc) for a good hour. Fish out the bones and put back extra pieces of flesh then liquidize. This is dinner.
- save them in a bag in the freezer for a rainy day (vegetarian lunch day I mean)

Ask my dear butcher for pig skin. This comes to me free since I spend so much money there!!!! And I add this to the lentil/pea/chick pea soups. It gets boiled, then cut up before the liquidizing part (I killed enough liquidizers on the way). For a treat I sometimes reserve half of the skin and cut it up in squares that I fry and add to the liquidized result.

Enjoy!!!!

Head cheese !!!!! If only someone was around to feed me properly!