B-gock!

I cooked a chicken!  A whole one!  It was my first time!  I forgot to take any pictures, but that's probably for the best, because to be honest... it's kind of a disgusting process.  It tasted great, but I definitely considered becoming a vegetarian more than once throughout the course of my afternoon.

Things got off to a rough start, when I realized my defrosted chicken was not actually defrosted.  I sent it to the lukewarm water spa for an hour or so, which seemed to help.  I opened up the chicken to remove the little package of gross things, only to find it was still frozen and wouldn't come out!  And not only that, but the package was PAPER, so it ripped open and oooooh it was not a comfortable 10 minutes of surgery.  (Who puts a paper package in a typically moist location??)  Eventually I got it all out and into the garbage, put the chicken on it's rack, and washed my hands 17 times.

I pureed a bunch of fresh thyme, sage, and parsley with some salt and pepper, butter, and a bit of olive oil, and rubbed it all over the chicken, inside and out.  Strangely, it turned the skin yellow... like fake tanner. (Spa, tanning session, maybe the I wasn't being so cruel to the chicken after all...)  I had half a tomato leftover from lunch, so I put that inside the chicken, along with a quartered onion.  Placed about a half cup of water in the bottom of the pan, and covered the roast with foil.  Into the oven, 350, for about 90 minutes (this chick was a little under 6 pounds).  Then I bleached everything in the kitchen.  Not really, but I wanted to.  I tried to be reasonable, and only bleached areas the chicken had been.  And washed my hands 16 more times.

I removed the foil for the last 10 minutes, and then put it back on for about 20 minutes after the chicken came out of the oven.  The smell was woooonderful, and I couldn't keep my hands off for long... I needed to know how it tasted!  Lucky for me, it was delicious!  I went right to work making little piles of white, dark, and soup meat, but a good portion of it went straight into my mouth.  I hadn't realized how slimey (the spell check wants me to say smiley, but it doesn't feel appropriate considering the carnage) I would get!!   I think the slime helped combat the compulsive hand washing, because the skin on my hands is feeling a little softer than usual today, haha.  (Gross!)

I tried to use as much of the leftovers as I could... I made gravy and broth too!  The gravy had the flavor of the roasted herbs too, really nice.   I couldn't think of anything to do with the skin though, it was way too disgusting (I've heard you should use tit to make the broth taste better, but ewwwww slime).  The whole process was pretty gross, it was tasty (served with steamed broccoli and experimental sour cream & parsley mashed potatoes), but once again thoughts of vegetarianism are swirling through my head... I don't see too many whole chickens in my future... for now I think I'll just stick to my former approach to cooking, mainly cooking things that are not recognizable as body parts!  And maybe I'll start growing some of these chickens, I know my mom would be very, very happy:

Peeps!

PS - Have any of you ever microwaved a peep?  I'm a goody two shoes and therefore haven't tried it, but I've thought about it...  maybe that should be my preferred method of "growing" peeps?