Roasted Chicken Dinner

It's been a couple weeks since I processed the last of our meat birds and I now have a bit of distance from the entire affair. The whole process - from chicks to table - has been quite an education for me.  I'm not sure I'm ready to put it into words quite yet, but perhaps some conversations with others will help me nail down and explore some of my ruminations.

That said, last night's dinner was quite delicious. We had corn/potato/cauliflower fritters; beautiful, plump, sweet Valley corn on the cob and our roasted chicken.

This was is a 7.5lb hen.  Quite large by supermarket standards, but not so by farm standards.  Kookum and Mooshum have some hens which are well over 8lbs, and roos which were approaching 10!

The finished bird. I put some fresh herbs and butter under the breast skin, then bathed with olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted.

It was a truly delicious meal - the skin was salty and crispy, the meat was juicy, tender and plentiful. We have a large tupperware container full of meat left over and the carcass is in the freezer for winter broth making.

All of that said, I didn't eat very much last night.  And as I write I find it somewhat disconcerting to refer to the crispy, delicious skin of an animal which once sat on my lap.

Perhaps I'm not as far away from the process as I thought...