Friday Night Chicken

So, I found this recipe while searching for an easy roast chicken recipe. I'm sure some of you know I am a long time vegetarian, but having recently reintroduced meat back into my diet, I had to learn how to cook it.

Not only was this recipe amazing, it's pretty inexpensive too. We have an extremely strict budget because my husband is still unemployed. I refuse however to budge my core values of providing whole organic food to my children and myself. I am ever conscience of the horrifying factory farming of animals, so I am careful about the poultry that I chose. I found a medium size organic farm raised chicken for $7.75. It wasn't some huge blown up Perdue, but I know my kids aren't getting strange chemicals and hormones.

Next the recipe calls for potatoes, celery, onion, and carrots. Last night, I didn't have celery on hand, but I love to add it when I can. A 1 lb bag of organic carrots is only $.99, and a 5lb bag of organic potatoes is only $4.99. Being the recovering vegetarian that I am, I also grabbed a few organic yams, which were only 50 cents a pound. I had an onion on hand as I typically do, but to add one onion in the mix will probably add about $.50.

So, if you add up the total for this one meal that in my family easily creates leftovers for lunch tomorrow you get totals like this.

$7.75 -- organic chicken
$2.00 -- 2lbs of 5lb bag of organic potatoes
$.50 -- 1/2 lb of organic carrots
$1.00 -- side of maple yams
$.50 -- onion
Total $11.75

There are so many things that could go well with this dish too. Adding garlic to your veggies helps so much, and even parsnips would be great too. I use a local white wine to make the juice. Virginia is a well kept secret in the wine world. Shhh.

We'll be nibbling off this chicken the rest of the weekend, and once the potatoes and carrots are gone, we'll turn the rest of the chicken into a Sunday afternoon chicken salad sandwich lunch.

Enjoy the recipe, be sure to thank the original guy for it too. Oh, here is a picture of today's leftovers. I forgot to take a picture of the bird last night before we dug into it.