Chicken is Back on the Menu

Back in November, we harvested our meat birds. They went directly into our neighbor's freezer (our freezers were packed). It wasn't until this past week that we actually ate one of these meat birds. I was feeling lousy at the time and couldn't quite imagine the smell of cooking chicken for an entire day. Plus, we have wonderful friends and a church family that kept us well fed. Soon it was time to travel for the holidays and more people fed us. How fortunate are we?

Anyway, this past week, Jamey went next door and retrieved one of our frozen birds. We thawed it overnight and it spent the next day in the crock pot, slowly cooking on my counter. It's been a long time since we have had chicken at home. Every time I had a poultry craving, I'd look outside and see our meat birds happily pecking away in the yard. So, we waited. We knew it would be worth it. I had a couple weak moments over the summer when I broke down and bought a free range chicken from our local farmer's market.

Jamey and I were vegetarians for quite awhile (me, about 7 years) before having kids. So, it wasn't that hard to go without chicken while we waited for our birds to mature. Also, we had venison on hand given to us by our friend's parents. And, occasionally, I would buy some sausage at the farmer's market.

Indian Chicken

Ok, back to our chicken. Once cooked (First thing in the morning, I put the bird and a cup of water into my crock pot whole, turn it on high for an hour and then turn it back to low until late afternoon.), I pulled half the meat off the bones (or rather it fell off) and added it to the dish I was making. Jamey pulled the rest off the bone and it went into the freezer for next week sometime.

So, what did I make with our first chicken? Indian Chicken from the More with Less cookbook. The first time we ever ate this was almost 6 years ago, soon after Sam was born. My friend, Mama JJ, had brought a meal to us (the new, green parents) and this is what she brought, along with other tasty things. She has written about this dish on her blog and you can find her post about it and the recipe here. It's one of my very favorite chicken dishes- it's the first chicken recipe I made since having chicken again for crying out loud! The main ingredients, other than chicken, are onions, curry powder, honey and chicken stock. I served it over rice with green beans and applesauce (both on the side, not together). Delicious.

I am really impressed with how these meat birds turned out. They are bigger than what I usually have gotten at the farmer's market. I had to put a heavy pot on top of the crock pot lid to hold it down tight. One of these chickens will easily make 4-6 meals for us (Sam is a professed vegetarian). We'll see how fast we go through them, but I have a feeling raising meat birds will become a yearly tradition.

I love chickens. Pin It