This stock is the basis for almost all of the soups that I make.  It is easy, economical and once you make your own stock, I doubt you will ever go back to store bought.

I have two bags in my freezer.  One for veggie scraps, and one for chicken bones.  Whenever I make a salad, or slice up brussels sprouts or green beans or cauliflower, I through the scraps in the veggie scrap bag.  This includes onion peels, garlic paper, carrot ends and peels, mushroom stems, celery leaves, stems for parsley, ciantro, thyme, rosemary.  Just throw it all in the bag and wait for it to accumulate.

I always buy a whole chicken - I never buy that white pasty chicken breast on the styrofoam tray.  Precut chicken is more expensive, worse for the environment, and so less tasty than chicken cooked on the bone.  And .... when you buy a whole chicken, you also get to keep the bones to make stock!!!!!.  If you don't feel comforatable chopping up a chicken, give it to the butcher at the grocery store, they will cut it up for you.  

When ever I cook chicken, I cook it on the bone and then remove the bones before serving.  The bones go in the bone bag in the freezer just waiting to for stock day.