One Local Summer, week 4: Roast Chicken & Potatoes

I didn't drop the ball this week, I made it to not one but TWO farmers markets this weekend, and I tried a new experiment in cooking: roasting a whole chicken. I've never bought a whole chicken before, except for a pre-packaged roasted whole chicken at Aldi, which was much easier to handle, and, well, already cooked. I expect the chicken will be a part of next week's local meal as well, as we have plenty of leftovers. It was quite an adventure figuring out how to cook & carve the thing as well. I kept the cooking as simple as possible, and the carving, well, I tried.

This week's farmers market finds include green beans, tomatoes, and red potatoes, in addition to the chicken.

Our local meal this week consisted of roasted chicken with roasted red potatoes:


In other local-food news, I've mentioned before that I have tomatoes growing in pots on my somewhat-shady balcony. I wasn't sure if I'd get any sort of harvest, and then the plump green balls started appearing on the 2 roma- and 3 cherry-tomato plants. Well today was it! I harvested my first tomato, ever. it was a roma tomato, not terribly big, but I was proud nonetheless. I can't wait until the plants full of cherry tomatoes start to turn red- though I've heard its hard to keep up with them when they do.

And, the newly-harvested tomato was not part of our local meal because I couldn't contain myself and ate it before it could be included in anything.