One Chicken, Many Meals

The price of food is on a lot of people's minds. It's high. And now it's time to do some creative budgeting. SO to give you an easy way to stretch that grocery dollar, let's talk about chicken. Yes, chicken. Roasting a chicken for dinner is a really easy and comforting thing to do. There are seriously tons of interesting and tasty ways to roast a chicken and it really doesn't matter which way you do it.

I roasted mine with a handful of fresh parsley and a cut up lemon inside of it, after I sprinkled the cavity and under the skin with a combination of cracked black pepper and kosher salt. I then tucked the wings under the body, stuck it in a pan and placed it in a preheated 425 degree F. oven for an hour while I went off and wrote a paper. (I should indeed be writing 2 papers right now, but that's another story.) And here's my finished bird.

When I got home from school, the Brain had eaten his half the chicken and I sliced some off to eat that night. We will count this as meal 1. I then pulled any remaining meat off this carcass and made a light and delicious chicken salad. Again, any chicken salad will do, but I wanted to try a Curried Chicken Salad with Grapes that sounded interesting and that's the one I went for. It was pretty good and provided meals 2 through 6. The Brain didn't have any of the salad, and the amount of leftovers and meals you can make with leftovers will depend greatly on how many people are eating them.

Then I took the chicken carcass that had been picked clean of edible meat and threw it in a pot with some water, half an onion, a couple stalks of celery cut in 3 pieces each, a cut in quarters carrot and a handful of parsley. I let that boil for about 2 hours. Then I strained it and stuck it in a bowl in the fridge. When I got back from school, the grease from the chicken had coagulated on top. It was pretty gross. That grease gets thrown out. But now I had some golden chicken broth. Which I packaged up in my favorite ice cream container and stuck in the freezer for later.
I took some more of the yummy golden broth and heated it to boiling with a carrot, nicely chopped, a stalk of celery, nicely chopped, and about a cup of fine egg noodles. And voila! I have chicken soup. Perfect for a rainy afternoon like today! And that's meal 7 and probably 8 and 9 out of that one little chicken. I'm telling you chicken is a real money saver.

For more ideas on stretching a dollar, try checking out Mrs. W's Kitchen and The Cheap Chick.