A whole chicken.

When I was in high school, I did musical theatre. Surprise, surprise.

During dress rehearsals, the week before the show, Mrs. Hunter (the caterer I work for) would generously come and feed us. I remember looking forward to dress rehearsals for that reason alone, and guessing all day what the menu would be.

Would it be her famous chicken dijon? Or the chicken and olive pasta salad I loved so much? And, as always, we prayed for her perfect chocolate chip cookies.

One infamous day, that is still referenced a great deal, I was standing backstage and hear someone yell, "A WHOLE CHICKEN!"

Yes, Mrs. Hunter had brought us individual roasted chickens with red potatoes and haricots verts. People thought this was the fanciest, most special and most delicious thing they'd ever eaten. And at that moment, it probably was. After spending so much time in a high school auditorium, singing and dancing for 8 hours after school, "grateful" doesn't seem to cut it. We probably should have dedicated every show to Karen Hunter Catering.

When our subletter Jeff moved in to Laura's room, I wanted to go all-out for our first meal. Because, in my mind, a whole roasted chicken is the most special thing, that is what I did.

Being that the chicken was so big, I turned a lot of the white meat into chicken enchiladas with a pumpkin sauce and cranberry walnut chicken salad.

There's no recipe for this chicken, other than to say I rubbed the outside with copious amounts of butter, seasoned heavily with salt and pepper, and baked according to the label. I'm excited to find other ways to season and flavor the bird, now that I know a little bit more about what I'm doing (when I read "remove the giblets", I almost panicked. Little did I know, they were already pre-packaged in a bag that I simply had to pull out).

This 6 lb. chicken fed us for an entire week--between the enchiladas and chicken salad, as well as the dark meat (which Jeff ate) and the stock from the carcass--for only $5.

The next few posts will be about this chicken's journey, from roast to stock.