Roast Chicken -- start it on Monday so you can have leftovers all week long

I have been plotting. What is the most effortless way to have delicious meals all week long? We used to get rotisserie chickens on Friday night, which means a relaxing weekend of chicken pot pies and whatnot, and maybe even lunch for a day or two throughout the weekdays. Though it does get a bit boring. We have tried all chickens in major grocery stores. Of course we have our favorite, though the most convenient store tend to provide overcooked/dried ones. So we took a break from rotisserie chicken for a month. Now we miss it! Luckily, we had a bird in our freezer -- a hearty 6 pounder. The plan was to cook it on Saturday night, so that we can have it over the weekend, and stretch it for lunch through mid-week. Well, it turned out to be a bit more complicated...

After pulling the bird out of freezer EARLY Saturday morning, I realized that it would take more than 24 hours to defrost. No worries. We would just have some pork chops (aka D's favorite dinner) and roast the bird on Sunday. But we forgot that we had a BBQ lunch on Sunday! It was quickly decided during the BBQ that we should all gather at our place to watch the new season of Game of Thrones over pizza. So instead of roasting a big bird, I made three whole wheat bacon & onion pizzas instead. Do not worry about our cholesterol level please, we did have a kale & spinach salad on the side.

Finally, after days of planning, I got to roast the chicken tonight! Woo-hoo! And it turned out well!

Before taking on the challenge, some research was definitely needed. While browsing and struggling to choose the best roast chicken recipe, this article was very much helpful (and fun to read). I finally settled on a cross between Ian Garten's Perfect Roast Chicken and Keller's Simple Roast Chicken. Bringing in whatever vegetables we had at home, a simple one pot evening dinner was called for.

Roast Chicken with Lemon and Vegetables

serves 6

• 1 roasting chicken (6 lbs)
• 1 big lemon
• 1/2 celery rib
• 2 large carrots
• 1 large russet potato
• 1 medium onion
• 1/2 bundle asparagus
• salt & pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Remove the giblets, rinse the chicken and pat dry.
2. Season the chicken liberally with slat and fresh ground pepper, both inside the cavity and out.
3. Cut the lemon in half, stuff it in the cavity together with the celery rib (recipes often ask you to tie up the chicken but I was out of twines and it turned out OK).
4. Chop up the carrots, potato, and the onion. Slice the asparagus in half and layer all vegetables on the bottom of a baking dish.
5. Put the chicken on top of the vegetables (you can coat them with olive oil but I did not even bother), breast side up.
6. Roast the chicken in the preheated oven for 15 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 350 degrees and roast for another hour. (I made a loaf of muffins at the same time.) Increase the temperature to 375 degrees and roast for 15 minutes to finish off.

The bird was JUICY and succulent, and the skin was surprisingly crispy, without the need of adding ANY additional oil. I had three servings. D was not hungry but had two servings nonetheless. My favorite part was actually the vegetables, soaked in the chicken juice and was cooked to perfection. Can I just say that I am actually looking forward to the leftovers?

Nutrition:
Each serving provides 551 calories, together with 40 grams (!) of protein and 87% of your daily need of Vitamin A. (For a more detailed analysis, please see http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/recipe/3074789/2?quantity=6.0&nc=1&autosave=form.info.autosave)

Cost:
The whole chicken costed us about $8, the organic carrots $0.25, celery + onion about $0.25, lemon about $0.5, asparagus $1. For ten bucks, we are (hopefully) able to get 6 servings, which means less than $2 per serving of good protein and vegetables. Not bad at all!

Here is a final shot at our good looking bird -- I shall miss you when you are gone...