Roast chicken, succotash, and pasta

Not all on the same night. This is what happens when you don't have time for regular posts.

We had some friends over for dinner on Saturday. I was going to make my standard "roast chicken parts" from organic, free-range chicken. But, the store was out. So I bought a whole organic free-range chicken, and roasted that. I say "my standard" because I really don't cook meat a lot. I've managed to figure out how to not ruin chicken (baking/roasting), salmon when I get it from the neighbor (pan-frying) and beef (in stews). I generally pull out this expertise when friends visit. Because normally? I'm happy with beans, rice, and vegetables. Which we ate a lot of this week.

My favorite roasted chicken recipe is here, and it's cooked on a bed of veggies. Now, the veggies usually get very cooked (aka, almost burned). And this day, well, I wanted to cook some more pumpkin muffins, which required a lower oven temp, so I went with that. This meant the chicken took 10 mins longer, but still was tasty. I had two small butternut squash, so we cooked the chicken on a bed of squash and onion. Boy, was that squash good. My friends liked it too "it's tasty - oh wait, it was the bed of the chicken". Yep, you got it, soaked in chicken juices. When you buy whole organic chicken at the farmer's market or the stores here, you get the giblets too, which is awesome for me. My friend loves the neck and I'm a big fan of the liver. I saved the carcass for stock. I mean, if I'm going to eat an animal, I don't want to waste anything.

Remaining food for the week includes a homemade succotash of a sort. The lima beans, green onions, carrots, and zucchini were all from our CSA. We ate a lot of pinto beans, then I made a pasta on Wednesday. I used whole grain pasta and frozen veggies, and the PMS told me to make a cream sauce. So I dug out my weight watchers cookbook and made a slightly more-waist friendly alfredo sauce than the traditional drenched-in-butter type.

The last week of the CSA was today. We got kale, lettuce, radishes, pumpkin, garlic, zucchini, cucumber, oranges, and tongue of fire beans. Don't feel sorry for me though, because the new season starts in 6 weeks. Yep, a 46 week CSA. I love California.