The Life of a Chicken

No, not really.  Just the progression of a chicken.

Step 1: chop vegetables.  Here we have delicata squash, sweet potato, onion, bell pepper, broccoli, carrot.  Toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper, put in a roasting dish.

Steps 2-4:  Stuff a chicken with lemon, thyme, rosemary, and garlic.  Salt, pepper, and butter the outside.  Place on top of vegetables and roast.

Step 5:  Carve pumpkins with your family (and roast the seeds!)

Step 6: Take the chicken out of the oven and admire.

Step 7: Enjoy! With Kale chips!  But feel bad that you bought a free range chicken that was fed corn and soy feed.  Not fit for chickens.

Step 8: Throw the carcass (along with a second one from another chicken made elsewhere...maybe Costco) with some bay leaf into the crockpot and let it cook on low all night to make stock.  I got about 14 cups of stock.

Step 9:  Make a big pot of cream of broccoli soup from America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook with your chicken stock (you'll still have some stock leftover).

Step 10:  Enjoy your soup with some chicken tacos from leftover chicken.  That's home-canned salsa on there.

Step 11:  A couple of days later, think: "oh crap, what are we going to eat for lunch, we are out of vegetables, and soup does not travel well by bicycle".  Throw some brown rice into the rice cooker with 2 cups of chicken stock.  When done, add in a can of black beans, the last bits of freezer bags of corn and peppers, some cumin, garlic powder, salsa, and oregano, fresh cilantro, and the last of the chicken.  Enjoy for lunch for 3 days.  Store in the rice cooker pot to decrease dish washing.

Step 12:  Remind yourself that you still have 6-8 cups of stock in the freezer.  Take a deep breath and realize that you aren't cooking at all for dinner this weekend due to various events.  Start planning daytime cooking anyway so you don't starve next week.