First of all, thank you so much for your kind words and support on my last post. I believe that I've found my focus again and if you've been watching my Facebook posts, you've seen how I am back to logging my food intake. A neccessary evil. But it seems to be working...I saw a high of 144.6 lbs on Sunday morning (yikes), but this morning I am already down to 141.8 lbs.
Second, can we please talk about my rotisserie chicken addiction for a sec? It's kinda a good addiction I suppose since I get most of my protein from chicken....oh and dairy 'n eggs too.
I usually buy one or two rotisserie chickens at my local grocery store each week. They're about $6-$7 each.
I take the chicken home and immediately carve it up into four or five, 3 ounce servings. Lots of little Tupperwares hang out in my fridge and are ready to go when I get hungry. They're easy to take to work for lunches and make a quick dinner when I'm busy in the evenings. I've been doing this for over two years now. It's easy. It works for me.
Anyways, I've been thinking about the quality of those rotisserie chickens that are mass produced and distributed on the huge corporate scale.
A little background for you: I was an Agricultural Business major in college. I took crazy yet interesting classes that I never use in my real life today like "Soil Science" and "Poultry Science." Yes. I have disected a chicken (feathers and all). Wait, let me clarify. My lab partner disected a chicken while I stood a good five feet away. Anyways, I digress.
One fateful day in Poultry Science class, we took a field trip to Foster Farms in central California. We got to see the ENTIRE process of how chickens are produced. We saw live chickens waiting in trucks outside the facility and saw them move through to slaughter, cleaning, and processing. We saw
EVERYTHING. And I still eat chicken today. Yum. I know for a fact that my local large corporate grocery store does not source from a high quality operation like Foster Farms.
So, I thought that I would give this chicken cooking thing a try. How difficult could it be?
I bought myself a
locally produced, organic chicken (by the way, I named her
Eloise 2.0). She cost $13. Ouch. That's twice the price of my rotisserie chickens.
Being a firm believer in the saying "You Get What You Pay For," I pressed on.
I decided to cook her in the "beer can" chicken style. But alas, I had no beer, so I used a can of apple juice. I added lots of lemons, lemon juice, salt/pepper, seasonings, and even gave her a fashionable lemon hat and into the oven she went:
Here's how she looked when she emerged from the oven about an hour and a half later. The kitchen smelled freaking
AMAZING.
Now, on to the important part...how did it taste?
FABULOUS. So much more flavor than those rotisserie chickens.
Was it worth the extra work? Yes, it was. But I will probably only do this occasionally. My life's too busy usually.
Was it worth the extra cost? Yes, the better quality and taste was totally worth it. There's something about the lack of antibiotics and being organically produced that also makes it worth it.
I'll have to pinch my pennies though and save up.
