#FoodTuesday #cookingwithleftovers #recipe #SortOf #writingprompt

So I bought a whole chicken from the farmers market. A dead, frozen chicken, not a live one. I like having live chickens, even though they’re a lot of work and I might as well buy a dead one because live ones don’t stay live long around here, what with wild predators and whatnot.

ANYWAY, I bought this chicken, which was a solid block of meat and bone. It took nearly a week for the damn thing to thaw completely. Then I spatchcocked it.

If you watch a lot of cooking shows, you might have run across spatchcocking, which is cutting out the poor bastard’s spine and spread-eagleing (or is it spread-chickening?) it. Then I made a mix of olive oil, salt, pepper, rubbed sage, onion powder, and I forget what all, and rubbed that all over both sides of the chicken and under its skin. I cut some fresh rosemary and stuck that under the skin of the breast, thighs, and legs.

I fired up my ASmoke grill to 225F and put that chicken bony side down on a piece of pierced foil on the grill. Let that smoke for about an hour, then flipped it bony side up, cranked up the heat to 450F and did another hour or so.

Sara hates white meat because it’s always dry, but she went for this because it was juicy and succulent.

Sara, Michael, and I ate and ate. So call that three meals

There’s actually a decent amount of meat in the back portion of a chicken, so I cooked that low and slow in a pan and that was a fourth meal.

Even with all we had eaten, there were leftovers.

I pressure cooked the carcass, less the wings and the already detatched meat, with carrots, celery, onions, and carrots, strained out the veg and bones, pulled off the nicest meat and returned it to the pot and pulled off the meat I thought Sara would think was “icky” and put it with the celery and carrots, then bottled the pot broth and nice chicken and gave it to Sara to make chicken and dumplings. Not counting that, yet.

I put the wing bits into the pressure cooker with rubbed sage and chicken boullion and cooked that down. Removed the wings and set them aside. Added some cream and cornstarch and thickened that and put it with the “Icky” chicken bits and carrots and celery, made a crust and made a chicken pie that did me for two meals. Fifth and sixth meals.

Sara did make the chicken and dumplings and brought it for Sunday dinner, where I added the rest of the breast meat. She and Michael and I had it. Seventh, eighth, ninth meals.

There was some left over. Tenth meal. One wing with a little extra meat was left, and that was the eleventh meal.

Unlike farmer’s market eggs, which are cheaper than grocery store eggs, this was an expensive chicken. But, considering the value I got from it, was it expensive? Was it? I’m a little tired of chicken now, but whatever.

A WRITING PROMPT FROM ME TO YOU: Something lasts a long time.

MA