A weird little chicken

Thanks for the comments and support ! We all get those days that make you go "grrrr" , and it seems with each stage of life new ones come up. I am soon to be 52, and life is filled with a lot of wild cards these days it seems. Looking at retirement in a few years ( Ha Ha Ha !), looking at my son going to college or whatever he chooses for his life in a year, aging parents who need care decisions ( my mother in law is in a nursing home and my mom will most likely be in one soon, my father in law to watch over ), and on the very near horizon the realization that after 15 years of being the main focus in my life, I am coming to a time when I will no longer be a homeschooling mom.All of those hours spent on lesson planning, chasing down materials, adapting lessons, record keeping and more will be over. After 20 years of either working to improve my body so I could conceive, being pregnant , being a mom of a little or a homeschooling mom, I will finally have the main focus be on me. It's like I am suddenly back to being on the edge of 17, wondering who and what I am , but with a lot of life wisdom to temper the choices. You don't quite know what to expect it seems.

Much like what I found the last time I bought chicken legs . Our market often has a good deal on 5 lb bags of chicken legs and thighs, and when they go on sale I buy them , split them up into meal size portions and freeze for future use. The last bag I bought had several legs and one sort of scrawny, wings removed whole chicken. I portioned off the whole chicken , with intentions of using this guy for a big pot of stock, but forgot to label him as such. Note- ALWAYS label what you put in your freezer because things can become very indistinguishable ! So I pulled him out thinking he was a bag of legs, and Surprise !!

So what do I do with this whole chicken on a day when it is almost too warm to run the oven ? Crockpot to the rescue. Here is how to do it where it does not wind up swimming in grease or so dry it makes you choke.

Take a sheet or two of aluminum foil and bunch it into a ball. Place in your crock pot with a scant cup of water in the bottom ( crock pots work best with moisture, but the moisture will not evaporate so go easy). Then place your chicken on the foil ball and prepare your seasonings

Roast chicken rub

1 teaspoon Black Pepper
2 teaspoon Garlic Powder
1 teaspoon Thyme
1 teaspoon oregano
juice of 1 lemon
2 teaspoons Paprika
1/2 teaspoon olive oil

Mix together and then paint your chicken with the mixture

Now here's the important part- cook on low for NO MORE than 5 hrs ( 3-4 is optimal)! Modern crockpots run very hot, and the old method of starting them in the morning and letting them run all day will produce something that has a very unpleasant taste and texture. Many a meal has been spoiled by this fact.
I served the Weird little chicken with roast broccoli and a spinach , strawberry, walnut red onion salad with lemon dressing from the other day. Yum !

Exercise wise it was a great day. We went out for a couple of walks and spotted 4 red tail hawks circling in the sky above. I suddenly thought about those cartoon depictions of vultures scanning soon to be dead prey and my changing life, and just got a fit of laughing. I may be getting older, but I am far from ready to let these guys have at me ! Funny how thoughts like that can make you walk extra laps ! All around us the trees have burst into leaves and there are ten million dandelions on the lawns. Rather than focus on those circling hawks above, I think I will join with the dandelions and trees and get excited about my own soon to be new life .