Adventures with a Chicken

So last Tuesday I obtained a chicken from friends. I was looking for grass-fed free range chicken which is hard to do in Northeast Iowa but luckily my friends are awesome and raise some and butcher them and were nice enough to sell me one! Yay for connections!
Anyway I would like to point out that first of all I have never made a whole chicken before. My family always buys them in a bag of either just breasts or thighs (usually without bones) and so that was passed on to me naturally. But I was determined to cook a whole chicken because 1) it's cheaper 2)I can use the leftovers for other things 3)it isn't a processed and weird whole.
Don't get me wrong it's not like I've never cooked poultry the the bones and stuff before I've made countless turkeys! But what is a good way to season and prepare a chicken. Well I found a recipe for a crock-pot chicken and it looked good plus the same recipe told how to make chicken stock with the leftover bones and such! (Win!) Plus it looked super easy.And it was! (Winning!)

Raw Chicken in Crock-Pot

Spices

Done Chicken!


I was at my mom's house when it was just a about dinner so I asked Mr. T to make some rosemary potatoes to go with it just cube up the potatoes and put in the oven with some rosemary and butter. Well he got confused and put the cilantro that I had in the fridge on instead of rosemary (I need to teach him his spices...) but it turn out ok and I sprinkled a bit of rosemary on it when it got out of the oven. Overall it was a great meal especially since I hadn't had any meat for 3 days which I think is a record because before meat was an every day thing especially at my parents house where if we didn't put meat in the spaghetti we would hear it from dad that meat king. But I didn't miss it too much but it was still really good!

Cilantro Potatoes


So after dinner I prepared the crock-pot with all the chicken stuff that was left after I took off all the meat and made some chicken stock in my sleep. Yeah. I'm that talented. So when I woke up the house was full of yummy chicken smells!
And with that broth I made chicken noodle soup that night. Which was also super easy, fast and yummy! Mr. T is still raving about it. With the leftovers I put into jars and froze them so I can take them back to college with so I can have a quick dinner. Mr. T insisted that I leave him a couple jars too so being a nice person I did.

So now I'm back at college and a whole new chapter will start with new adventures of time management and trying not to take the easy way out and go to the dining centers or cafes around campus. But I think I can do it because I've been planning my meals to be easy and fast so that I will stay on it. But I have also decided that it is almost impossible to be in college and not go out every one in while with friends. So in this new light I am going to limit myself to going out 1 day a week but it has to be somewhere new that I haven't been before and/or somewhere that does serve real food. For example last night my sister and I went out for dinner with a friend and her new boyfriend and I wanted to try Indian food which I have never done before. Needless to say it was sooo good! It was really spicy for me but it was just so good that I just had to eat it all! I will be back! Plus I love trying new things anyway and this was definitely something new! Also my sister got a dish with beef and she wimped out on the spice so my friend and I tried it and both being foodies we decided that the beef was probably grass-fed! Win! I love when restaurants use awesome sustainable ingredients!
Today will consist of grocery shopping for the week and also shopping for a few school supplies to start classes tomorrow. Ugh. School.

The Last Couple of Days...

They have been... challenging but also eye opening to how we had eaten before.
We will start with Monday night. For supper I decided to make fajitas. I found a whole wheat tortilla recipe in the past I would have just picked up any (white) flour tortilla or if I was in a "healthy mood" I would have picked up the one that says "low fat!" or "90 calories" and been perfectly fine with it because it is easy and convenient. But this time I decided to investigate the tortillas I would have picked up. The ingredients are ridiculous! Seriously there's almost 30+ different ingredients! Holy crap. What the hell are "dough conditioners" or "cellulose gum"? And why do they need to be in my food?! The recipe that I used had 4 ingredients! And it tasted every bit (if not better) than the store bought tortillas.And seriously making them isn't that hard at all. Kinda relaxing beating up the dough with my fists.

The next thing that happened was a thing of habit that we need to break. I forgot to get sour cream so like I usually do I asked Mr. T to pick some up from the grocery store on his way home. When he got home I noticed he got "light" sour cream not thinking of it and thinking it should just be the usual dairy stuff in it. But when I looked there is like 10 different ingredients most of them I could pronounce if it killed me. But since town is 10 minutes away and we were both starving we decided just to use it and be more careful next time.
Anyway, the fajitas were really really good! Even if there wasn't any meat in them Mr. T scarfed a couple down. I had put on a plate of different things to add to them like avocados, cilantro, tomatoes, and olives. Yummy!

Then last night I used the mixture (peppers, onions, and mushrooms) that was left over from the fajitas and added some zucchini to it and made quesadillas and they were delicious! I think this will be a staple meal especially when I go back to college because it's quick and so good!
Well tonight I will be making a whole free-range chicken in my crockpot and make broth with the carcass for chicken noodle soup tomorrow night! Fun fun!

First Day Adventures!

So yesterday was my first day of my Real Food Resolution. And it went great! Well... for the most part.
I didn't get to eat a good breakfast (all I had was a clementine) but for lunch I made a nice salad of spinach, pecans, and homemade poppyseed dressing (I'll share the recipe later because it was delicious!)
I decided that I wanted Black Bean Soup for supper. Now I've never tasted it before let alone made it so I was kind of nervous about how it would taste in the end. But after a couple hours in the crock-pot the smell filled the house and I wanted to dig in RIGHT NOW! Unfortunately, it had a few more hours to cook so that wonderful savory smell tortured me until it was time to finally eat.
During that tormenting time I decided that this soup would be perfect with some biscuits! Now I've never made biscuits before unless it came from a box or a can so I was kind of nervous how they would turn out especially since I had to make them the "real food" way with whole wheat flour. I mean, I've cooked with whole wheat flour before but let's just say we're not best of friends. It seems that whenever I have tried to make breads with WW flour it ends up like a flat rock. Heavy and dense. Blah. Who likes heavy rock bread? Seriously yuck. But despite my fears I went forward and made some ww biscuits. I used a recipe on 100 Days of Real Food is the website that has most helped me decide on taking on this Real Food Resolution! Go there and be inspired! The pictures of her biscuits looked fluffy and moist so I thought "Mine will look just like that!" excited with big fluffy biscuit dancing in my head I mix it all up and cut them in to rounds and popped them in the oven and waited for big buttery biscuits of love.
Alas, my dancing fluffy biscuits were not so fluffy(Nor dancing). Whole wheat flour has once again turned my expectations upside down. Disappointed I decided to try them. So I picked the most disfigured biscuit slathered some butter on in and took a bite expecting the worst. But to my surprise they were pretty dang good! Not like Grands Biscuits or anything but they were good!
So I set the table with the soup and biscuits and waited for the mister to get home from work (did I mention the torture I was under to eat this wonderful smelling stuff?) Finally he got home and we chowed down! It was as good as I thought it was going to be! So rich and flavorful! But Mr. T... Now he is kind of picky. If there isn't meat he isn't going to like it much. But he ate it as well and he said it was good although he had a texture problem with it. -_- I had blended it with my hand blender and I guess since it wasn't all the same texture through out that's a problem for him. *Sigh* Oh well he ate it anyway. He'll get used to my new eating habits hopefully. Luckily (or not so luckily) right now we only get to see each other on the weekends so he can eat what he wants for now until he moves down by me this summer.
So overall this first day was a day of mixed emotions disappointments and joys but overall it was a yummy first day!
Below I have pictures of the biscuits and the soup with the links to the recipes. So click and enjoy! :)

Super Easy Whole Wheat Biscuits

Black Bean Soup

Have a Yummy Day! :)

A Real Food Resolution

Hi Everyone! Welcome to my blog! This blog is going to be mostly about my journey with real food that I have made as my New Year's Resolution. But also since I'm a crafty person I will occasionally post a crafty post! Whoot!
Anyway, my New Year's Resolution is to eat as much unprocessed, "Real Food" as possible. This includes grass-fed meats and mostly organic and sustainable foods. Lots of local and organic food!
Now the difficult part of this is, I am a busy college student. That means limited time to cook (but I do like to cook) and limited amount of money. I'm going to keep my budget around $40 a week. Hopefully with some planning and lots of research I can do this! So join me on this journey and let's see where we can go!