101 Uses for a Roasted Chicken: #1

New idea for the old food blog here. We'll see how it goes. I came across a book called Rotisserie Chickens to the Rescue a few months ago, and I thought it was a neat idea. I didn't buy the book in the end, so this is my version.

I can get rotisserie chickens at my local overpriced grocery store, but I don't see the point in spending the money when it's perfectly simple to bung a chicken in the oven and cook it myself. It's ridiculously simple.

I am trying to cut down my meat intake, so I'm going for less meat but better quality cuts instead. So, I'm cutting out deli stuff like Black Forest ham, and I'm going to lay off the bacon and start buying buffalo instead of beef. Having a whole roast chicken around is a convenient way of providing me with decent meat for sandwiches, salads, and a lot of other things, and I always freeze the carcass to make my own homemade stock. So, as you can imagine, it's quite economical for me on my piddly budget.

Tonight, I made a chicken pasta salad for dinner:

1 cup chicken, diced
1 cup small pasta, such as penne or macaroni, etc., (raw measure - then cook it)
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1 cup broccoli florets, chopped small
2 green onions, sliced
1 clove garlic, grated
crumbled feta cheese, to taste (optional)
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
1/4 cup low fat mayo
1/4 cup low fat sour cream
2 tsp dried dill
salt & pepper to taste

Do you really need instructions? It's a pasta salad! You get the picture, right? Just blanch the broccoli in the pasta water for a couple of minutes at the end of boiling, then drop it all into a collander and run it under cold water until completely cool. Mix. Eat. Enjoy.