On Sun, 22 Mar 2020 Dave Smith wrote:
>
>When my wife and I were shopping the other day we picked up a largeish
>chicken for Sunday night dinner.... 7 lb. She prepped it and put it in
>the oven figuring 3.5 hours cooking time. That seemed to work. I never
>trust the thermometer as much as pulling the leg and when it pulled off
>easily I figured it was cooked. I tented it and let it sit while I made
>the gravy. Then I vacated the kitchen and let Megatron finish. She had
>roasted potatoes and carrots and steamed some green beans.

I don't use roast chicken drippings, way too caloric with unhealthful
fat, that goes out for the birds/critters. We are not into gravy here
except for tomato sauce/gravy... which is what we had for dinner last
night with rotelle pasta and saw-seege... plenty for tonight too, only
oil used was a little olive oil. And I always simmer the saw-seege to
remove salts and excess fat and then brown them in a bit of olive oil.
Very pitiful lettuce at market so I concocted a fresh fruit salad from
navel oranges, red delish apples, bananas, and some walnuts, drizzled
lightly with honey... a nice change from garden salad.

And we didn't have chicken very often, but now with every stupidmarket
selling rotisserie chicken at give away prices I don't think about
cooking chicken, much easier to pick one up on a drive-by. The
Walmart here is now selling those 7lb oven roaster stuffing chickens
at $4.99, beautifully rotisseried... it's really plenty for a family
of five, the two of us can't finish one for two dinners and plenty for
the cats. I toss the frame and leavings out in a nearby hedgerow, I
put it out in half the plast clam shell it's sold in and it's always
gone by morning, I just pick up the licked clean plastic and put in
with the recyclables... the feral cats help too, and with the feral
cats I've never seen a rat, rare to see a field mouse, but more likely
to see frogs living in the vernal ponds and culverts... seeing frogs
is an excellent indication of no polution. Since I've been
feeding/watering the feral cats there have been no squirrels here
either, squirrels are disease carrying rodents too.