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I've roasted a lot of chickens over the years, beginning in graduate school and thereafter, until I married my husband who prides himself on his chicken roasting, which is not quite what I prefer. A 4-5 pound chicken would last me for the week. I'd eat it with sides for a couple of days, then cut it up and make some kind of a chicken dish--casserole or chicken over rice, chicken with pasta or soup--and I'd boil up the bones to make broth. In those days, they would also give us the "innards," and I would cook those up separately in a small pot and add that broth to the other broth.
With two of us, the chicken does not last that long, but I still reserve the bones--usually until I have several chickens or else those from a turkey--and make broth. Whole chickens were very inexpensive. Up until a couple of years ago, I would buy a couple when they were on sale for 50 cents a pound. It was more like 69 cents a pound on sale when we left Texas last year. Here, I don't think that I've seen under 99 cents a pound for a whole chicken. However, whole chicken legs or quarters are often 49 cents a pound on sale.
I use, and would still use, the Betty Crocker's Cookbook; my mother gave me the 1978 edition for Christmas that year. It included a table that said to roast a 3-4 pound (unstuffed) chicken at 375F for 1 hour 45 minutes to two hours and 15 minutes. I roasted it that way for years in a square oven baking dish. I've tried other recipes. A wild-rice with cherry stuffed chicken from Bon Appetit never cooked properly (that one was somewhat raw), although I tried the recipe twice, so I gave up on it.
I checked the Betty Crocker cookbook for a chicken roasted with vegetables, but it does not have such a recipe. I went online and looked at various ones, and what I did this time reflects one from a blog. (I think it is called Seven Spatulas.) A lot of recipes were "fussy," like the one where the chicken is cooked on top of the vegetables, which are then finished on top of the stove--no problem there--but it then wanted the chicken, after sitting out for 30 minutes to go back into the oven on a half-sheet pan at high temperature for browning. That seemed more trouble than it was worth.
On Friday, I have been busy in the kitchen. I fed my sourdough starter and used the discard to make a double recipe of the dough for my Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers (recipe on this site). I'll bake them in a couple of days, since I think that they are better when the dough rests in the refrigerator for a couple of days.
I also baked Butterscotch Apple Sweet Rolls, a recipe from Sift (Fall 2015), p. 40, which is also on the KAF website. I first baked it at the end of November. I still had enough Jonathan apples in the refrigerator from fall to make the recipe again. This time, I used half white whole wheat flour and 1/4 cup of flax meal. As before, I used the special gold yeast. I'll glaze them tomorrow morning, and we will have several mornings of nice breakfasts. [Note: This recipe kneads beautifully on the dough cycle in the bread machine, which gives you a chance to start making the filling, so that it will be cool by the time the first rise is finished.]
My final project was to make the levain for the recipe for Honey Spelt Sourdough Bread, another recipe that I first tried last fall. It's on the KAF website and was also in one of their fall catalogs. I'll bake it tomorrow.
Wow, Mike! That was a marathon kitchen session!
I have a new recipe baking in the oven, Applesauce Oatmeal Bread, from the KAF website. It's a quick bread. I decided to try reducing the sugar by 2 Tbs. I also cut the salt in half. I added 1 Tbs. flax meal, and I used regular whole wheat rather than white whole wheat flour. I chose to use the boiled cider instead of vanilla. I used pecans instead of walnuts, and I added 1/2 cup of Bob's Red Mill dried apple pieces. I'll report tomorrow on its taste, as quick breads are always better the day after they have baked.
Added Note: The Applesauce Oatmeal Bread, with the changes I made, is delicious.
I also got into canning jams and blueberry pie filling a few years back. No canning happened this summer, as we arrived too late for most of the fruits, and my canning supplies were buried. I've since found them, and I am looking forward to jams this summer--as long as the weather does not yo-yo and a freeze kill the developing fruit.
In the meantime, we are still finishing the last jars of jam from 2016.
Wonky, you are so fortunate to have kitchen time with your sister! My sisters live too far away for that. Your story also makes me think that perhaps I should consider trying to can some fruit this year.
Once canning season starts for 2018 (maybe it already has for Wonky!), let's start a dedicated canning thread.
Beans--specifically brown lentils from Bob's Red Mill--are on our menu for this evening. Here's a link to the recipe:
Jane Brody's cookbooks are favorites of mine, although right now they are still somewhere among the boxes. I followed this recipe except that I added a stalk of chopped celery, I used sliced carrots, since I only have baby carrots and did not want to bother grating them, and I added 1/2 cup of pearl barley. I also only used one, not two onions. (I've only recently been able to get my husband to eat onions in soup; it works as long as I saute them first.) I do not have parsley, so I could not add it. I used homemade turkey stock from the freezer.
As always, I started the soup on my regular stove, then moved it to the wood stove. I'll add a note after dinner about how we like it.
Note: It's delicious. I will definitely make it again.
