My New Year's resolution is to stick to our monthly budget. I'm very good at making budgets thanks to the handy and intelligent Excel spreadsheet. And it does gives me such a great feeling of satisfaction to know that everything is accounted for and planned out. The problem is that once that fateful payday has occurred and I've made the requisite transfers to our savings account and US account to pay our student loans, then everything goes to pot. Somehow, we wind up spending more than I had planned, and along with the overspending seems to come a lot of wasted food. Why didn't I freeze that leftover chili? I completely forgot about those tender asparagus spears! Clunk, thud, it all goes in the garbage. Bad.
This weekend we're having one of our favorites: Roast Chicken. Typically, we only get two meals out of a roast chicken and then wind up wasting the rest because it becomes unappealing having sat in the fridge covered in saran wrap for too long. Not this chicken! It's a free range chicken from France and I intend to get every last Franc out of it.
Tonight we'll have the roast chicken with vegetables, same tomorrow. Then, I'm going to pull the rest of the chicken from the carcass and make Oriental Chicken Salad from Nourishing Traditions.
Do you think I can get more from this chicken? Please send me your ideas! I hereby declare 2011 the year of waste not, want not.
5 comments:
Looks like a wonderful chicken! You can use the leftover bones and also veggie scraps (I keep onion & carrot ends, etc. in a container I keep in the freezer) and use to make a stock which can then be used for soups, risotto, a number of things :)
Great idea, Jenn! Now on the top of my shopping list is freezer containers...I need them for leftovers anyway. Tell me, what do you recommend for making a stock from a carcass as far as simmering time? In my America's Test Kitchen cookbook, there is a recipe for stock, but it calls for new (never eaten) chicken legs.
Linds, my recipe for chicken stock is here: http://aresohappy.squarespace.com/home/2010/10/2/2-october.html it can easily be made with one carcass. We tend to pull all the meat off the chicken right after it's cooked, put it all in a bowl, and start chicken stock right then. Then we can have chicken soup the next day, and still have chicken left over to put in other things; white chicken chili, enchiladas, tacos, with white sauce and pasta, on salads (rice and quinoa salads too!), whatever! xo
Thank you, Kyrie. Off to make the stock now!!!
That chicken needs more oven time!--Cyrus
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