My first-ever roasted chicken!

When I got married seven years ago, I’d never touched raw meat. My sister is a vegan, so I was familiar with all the great soy look-alikes for things like ground beef and chicken patties. It was at least 3 years into our marriage that I first made spaghetti sauce with real ground beef.

Since then, I’ve become a pro with ground beef, and my husband no longer has to cut up raw chicken for me. I’ve gotten over the general grossness of handling raw meat. Still, I’d never gotten more adventurous than chicken breasts with the skin and bones still there.

Yesterday, I took a big leap and decided to roast a whole chicken! I got the recipe from a great blog called Cheap, Healthy, Good. Here’s the link: http://cheaphealthygood.blogspot.com/2007/08/roast-chicken-hunter.html

Perhaps it’s because I was planning to cook one, but I’ve been noticing roasted chicken recipes everywhere as I was preparing for this meal. Rachel Ray’s magazine featured a version, and so did this month’s Martha Stewart.

For my attempt, I actually combined a few tips from each. I tied the legs up like Martha, used the same temperature she suggested, and I didn’t flip the chicken midway through. And I sprinkled thyme on top of everything. But I think you could safely follow just the recipe I’ve linked to above.

The thing that made this recipe unique was that it called for stuffing the chicken with two pricked lemons. As the chicken cooked, the juices from the lemons and the chicken created a delicious sauce for the red potatoes to cook in. And drizzled on top of the chicken, it was divine!

I bought the chicken at Aldi’s for less than $4. The potatoes were really cheap, but I can’t recall how much. My husband ate more chicken than the other blog author’s, so I don’t think we’ll be stretching five meals out of this one like she suggested. But I think we can get three. And, considering the whole thing cost maybe $6, that’s a pretty good deal!

I intended to take the bones and dark meat, and boil it with some veggies to create a homemade chicken broth for later. But by the time dinner was over, the cold I’d been fighting off all day hit in full force with a fever and body aches. So the poor chicken bones went into the trash, unused. There’s always next time. Because, I guarantee I’ll be making this again soon.