It is truly amazing of what you can do with a few ingredients and a little time. As the world turns inward with the coronavirus pandemic, a whole new spectrum of culinary options unfold. Our week started with the social distancing mandate that ended my practice of daily trips to the supermarket. After stops at Costco and Kroger we had the basic ingredients to keep us well fed for a month. In hindsight it was amazingly cheap.
The availability of basic groceries was really pretty good in Memphis. I was talking to friends out on the eastern end of Long Island NY and they referred to finding eggs to scoring eggs. It was almost like finding eggs was like finding drugs. At Costco I even bought a two month supply of toilet paper (one Costco pack) with no problem. The cost of buying groceries in bulk was inexpensive considering it will feed us for a month.
The one Roast Chicken dinner had a cost of $7.30.
(Apologies for this over analytical recap of ingredients, but you can take a guy out of financial analysis but sometimes you can’t take the analytic out of a guy)
Not only did the roast chicken feed 3 people well, it became the genesis of four additional entrees that will provide at basis for at least another twenty meals.
Just A Chicken Meal Plan
The prep time for the Roast Chicken meal was 20 minutes. After peeling and chopping, I added the vegetables to the bottom of the pan with a good sprinkle of kosher salt, freshly ground pepper and 2 cups of chicken stock. Then we roasted the chicken at 400 degrees for an hour and 10 minutes. When the chicken was done, I plated it along with the vegetables. I then added another cup of stock to the pan, scraped up the brown pieces, reduced it by a third and then thickened it with corn starch. Voila!
After dinner, the leftover chicken went into multiple directions.
- The chicken carcass went into a pot along with celery, onion, carrot, potato and water to make a very tasty soup for the next night.
- A portion of white meat was set aside for Declan’s (16 months old) lunch (see below)
- The remainder was shredded and boxed off to become the basis for the lasagna and ravioli
This guy loves his Gramp’s cooking
In the end, we had a wonderful chicken dinner. The beauty of this type of cooking is that not only can I feed my family, but I have been making up care packages to drop off with less culinarily adept friends. So while we are not exactly socializing over a meal with friends, we are practicing social distancing and making a few friends pretty happy. Its not Just a chicken.
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