Roast in Peace - Challenge #4

For my challenge assignment this week I decided to conquer roasting a chicken.  I haven't prepared much meat in my life since I was a vegetarian for 7.5 years until this February.  I'm trying to get more comfortable preparing chicken on my own.

I went to the Wedge Co-op and bought a beautiful chicken from the meat counter.  It was a locally produced chicken and was selling for $2.89/lb.  It was a little over 4lbs so the total came to $11.56.  I also bought 2lbs of red potatoes at 1.19/lb for a total of $2.38.

I relied on Bittman's Roast Chicken with Roasted New Potatoes recipe on page 359 for this assignment, and also relied heavily on my friend Katie's advice who was over for dinner.  She taught me how to truss the chicken and how to check for doneness.  I like supervision when I prepare meat since I haven't had much experience with it yet.

Look how delicious this chicken looked when we pulled it out of the oven!  I forgot to take a picture of it plated, but we also had a green salad with vegetables to accompany it.  The total for the part of this meal that I contributed was $13.94 (chicken and potatoes), and it fed four people for dinner with leftovers as well.

This challenge wasn't very difficult for me because I exclusively shop at the Wedge Co-op and farmer's markets.  Rarely do I go to a conventional grocery store.  I liked this challenge because it fit in with my food ethics and my general food consumption habits.