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!