Juicy roasted chicken

I have recently discovered that I can, indeed, roast a chicken. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that until a few months ago, I had never roasted an entire chicken before. It just seemed so advanced, so grown-up. Well, after becoming educated about how chickens are generally raised for slaughter (in horrendous conditions and pumped full of hormones and antibiotics) I had just about quit eating chicken altogether. I missed it. Chicken is so good, and healthy. Then I discovered that Costco carries a brand of chicken called Coleman's Natural that is organic, antibiotic and hormone-free, and that are fed no animal by-products. It's expensive, though. Really expensive. As one would expect, the full chickens are the cheapest per pound. So I needed to learn to either cook a full chicken or cut up a raw chicken. I went with the former. And guess what I discovered? It's easy. Really easy. Who knew? (Probably lots of people, actually, but not me.) I picked up a simple recipe from Allrecipes.com and made a few tweaks, and I couldn't be happier. Delicious, moist chicken. We always roast 2 at a time, one for eating and the other to cut up for other recipes. Finally, I am a real grown-up cook. (Don't tell anyone, but I've never roasted a turkey either. Maybe now I can take a stab at it. How hard can it be?)


Juicy Roasted Chicken

1 whole chicken, giblets removed.
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup butter
1 stalk celery, cut in sticks
1/2 of a lemon, quartered,
1/2 of a small onion, quartered

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place chicken in roasting pan (a square Pyrex dish works great) and season inside and out with salt and pepper (be very generous). Place 3 Tablespoons of the butter in the chicken cavity. Then stuff the chicken with the celery sticks, the lemon and onion wedges. Arrange the remaining butter, sliced into pats, on the outside of the chicken (see photo below). Bake chicken for 1 - 1/4 hour to 1 - 1/2 hour in the preheated oven. Remove from oven and baste with the drippings. Cover with aluminum foil and allow to rest for 30 minutes before serving. Delish.

BLT Pasta Salad

This is a salad that always gets good comments at a picnic or barbecue. It's a little different than the norm, but it's easy to make. And it has bacon. It's hard to go wrong with bacon.

BLT Pasta Salad

2 cups uncooked macaroni
5 green onions, finely chopped
2 tomatoes, diced
1-1/4 cups diced celery
1-1/4 cups mayonnaise
5 teaspoons white vinegar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 pound bacon, cooked and crumbled

Cook macaroni, drain and rinse in cold water until cooled. In a large bowl, combine the macaroni, green onions, tomato, and celery. In a small bowl, combine the mayo, vinegar, salt, and pepper. Pour dressing over macaroni mixture and stir to coat. Cover and refrigerate at least 2 hours. Just before serving, stir in bacon.