chicken

It should be pretty apparent by now that I am a fairly lazy individual.  I'd be totally satisfied eating frozen food every day and, frankly, I'm completely surprised that I'm still attempting to make my own food.  I had sort of assumed that this project would fall by the wayside shortly after I started it.  Sure, I haven't been the best at making a new recipe every week (or even making anything at all some weeks) but just the fact that I'm still going with this and have become more adventurous with food has been a source of pride for me.

That said, there are some things I just can't get behind.  Making your own mayonnaise, homemade bread (I am sure this is delicious but it seems like a lot of work.  You know what's good?  Bread from the store bakery.  It's only like $3 and costs me 0 hours of time.), and roasting your own chickens.

I love roasted chicken.  It was one of my favorite meals when I lived at my parents' house and it seemed like we had it once a week for a while.  I spent the first three years of living on my own without any roasted chicken in my life.  I had a roasting pan, but no drive to do anything with it.  I finally gave up and got rid of the roasting pan when I moved into my current apartment and it wasn't until last year that I realized that those rotisserie chickens from the grocery store are a god-send.  They are tasty, versatile, require minimal effort, and feed me for days.  This is made even sweeter by the fact that they are only $5 on Fridays at Stop & Shop.  Even so, a rotisserie chicken costs, what, $6-7?  You know what else costs $6-7?  A raw chicken that you then have to cook yourself.  I don't really get off on crafting the perfect rub of herb and spices for my chicken and so the "all natural" flavor works just fine.  It's flexible in the sense that I can then take pieces of that chicken and make many other dishes with it.

One of my favorite roasted chicken leftovers is chicken salad sandwiches.  I tend to err on the side of easy and bland when I make food, so I'm not even going to bother with a recipe.  I bought a nice baguette from the store, placed leftover chicken on it, slathered it with mayonnaise (I don't even mix it ahead of time now because I don't like how the mayonnaise soaks into the chicken over time) and topped it with a layer of almost but not quite wilted baby spinach.  It's easy enough that I can make it in my zombied before-work daze or throw it together for dinner quickly when I get home from work.