Roasted Chicken

When I don't know what to make for dinner I always seem to fall back on this one.  It's easy, you can improvise with whatever you have in your fridge and I save the carcass for chicken stock.  

1 whole chicken

vegetables

a carb (i.e. potatoes, rice, bread)

any seasonings you prefer

Cut the backbone out of the chicken (I freeze the backbone along with the heart, liver, etc. and I also save the bones and the carcass so I can pull them out of the freezer when I'm ready to make chicken stock).  I place the chicken skin side up in a pyrex baking dish, push it down to flatten it (push hard, break bones) and tuck the wings behind the "neck" so they don't burn.  Then I generously sprinkle sea salt over the bird and anything else you might want.  Yesterday I squeezed lemon juice over it and threw in some chopped onion and a couple little pieces of butter.  I have drizzled molasses and soy sauce over the chicken or just sprinkled some oregano.  It tastes great with just plain salt as well.  

Then I place a piece of parchment over the chicken, and some tin foil over that (so the foil doesn't touch the chicken).  Place in a 350 degree oven for a couple of hours depending on how big the chicken is (1 hour for every pound??).  When there is 30-45 minutes left remove the foil and parchment to let the chicken brown.  

Cook up a vegetable, our recent favorite is sauteed zucchini as found in Nourishing Traditions pg. 410.  If you read the paragraph right under the ZUCCHINI heading, that's what we do.  If you want your zucchini even dryer you can salt it and let it stand but we never do (lazy).  Just add lemon juice and salt after it's cooked.  yum!  

To finish off the meal have some kind of a carb, I prefer unsoaked basic rice(NT, 466) but if I'm in a hurry mashed potatoes are my fall back.  Just boil some potatoes until soft (with or without skin), drain most of the water and add a lot of butter (like a cube).  Mash.  Add raw milk or cream to desired consistency.  If you like it smooth use beaters.  I add a little cream cheese or sour cream (it gives it a nice tang, I've never tried yogurt but I bet that would be good too), dried onion, minced garlic and dried parsley.  Enjoy!

Hamburgers

I made homemade hamburgers for the first time yesterday. Yum! That was a yummy, easy meal. There are directions in Nourishing Traditions, here's what I did:

1 lb ground buffalo

1/4 c. finely chopped onion

1 clove of garlic, minced

a drizzle of molasses

a pinch of cloves

a dash of raw vinegar

salt and pepper to taste 

Moosh them all together and pat into patties.  Heat a large skillet on the stove to about medium and cook for about 5 minutes on each side or until the patties are cooked medium rare.  Use whole grain buns or sprouted buns.  I used gluten-free buns I found Vitamin Cottage called Outside the Breadbox just to see what they tasted like.  I don't really know Sally Fallon's take on brown rice flour based breads, I was just curious how it tasted.  It was pretty good.  You can use the Nourishing Traditions recipes for mayo, mustard and ketchup.  Throw on some raw cheese and a slice of tomato, delicious!  Makes about 5 mini burgers.