My First Chicken

I've never roasted beef before. I've never roasted a turkey before. And I had never roasted a chicken until last Thursday. Something about buying an entire uncooked chicken or turkey is kind of intimidating. But I knew my girlfriend had done it plenty of times, and I knew with her help I might be up for the challenge. So I texted her before I went to the grocery store and she said she text me through it. She gave me so many tips that she had learned from botching up about 3-5 on her own. Lucky me!! I was quite nervous, but figured whats the worst thing that could happen? Worst case we'd just order some take out.

Here's the thing...I'm not a bad cook. Actually I don't think I give myself enough credit. I can follow instructions to a T and for the most part, most of my dinners turn out. Here's what I lack...creativity. I don't know what ingredients are good with what, so I can never just whip anything up. I don't have much of an imagination when it comes to dressing up food and going out on a limb. But give me a good recipe with good reviews, and nine times out of ten mine will at least be edible! Another thing that I don't give myself enough credit for is even attempting good, family dinners. We have a sit-down dinner at least 5 nights a week. I don't make "kids meals" the kids eat what we eat. If they don't, then that's that. My only exception is if the kids say the really, truly don't like something and I see them take a bite and they are literally gagging themselves then I will find some sort of substitute. Like buttered bread or something not fun. The worst days are when I slave and slave over a meal and Tom and myself are the only ones who eat it and all three kids are crying throughout the entire meal. Those are the dinners where Tom and I look at each other like WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE WE DOING!?!?!

Back to the chicken....

I was most nervous about the cavity search. What was I going to find? A bag fully of the goodies? A bunch of disgusting guts that I needed to pull out? Clean as a whistle? I just didn't know. When I brought the chicken over to the sink to open pandora's box, I got nervous. Like spreading it's legs felt just wrong. AHH. But I opened her up and she was clean. Ahhh, I breathed a sigh of relief. I rinsed her off inside and out and then quartered up a lemon and squeezed the juice all over the chicken. Salt and peppered her up generously. Then popped her in the oven at 400 degrees.

TA DA! I ended up cooking it for about 1 hour 45 min. I had to cover it with tinfoil just a little bit so it didn't burn, but oh she was so juicy and done to absolute perfection. I couldn't have done it without my cooking mentor. Next up on the list....not sure. Suggestions? Maybe I should buy a cookbook and cook all of the recipes like that movie Julie and Julia. If only I had the patience, I might think about doing a challenge like that. I'd definitely ruin and waste a lot of food, no doubt.