The Dang Chicken Report (post-edited at 4:36am)*

So....last week, at the time I made the menu, I had not yet gone to the commissary.  As of this moment I still have not gone to the commissary, nor have I gone to any other grocery establishment.  This, as you may well imagine, has made for an interesting week.

Although interesting is not the word the children might use.

The week began with the Dang Chicken, which Charlotte recommended I stuff with garlic, slather with olive oil, sprinkle with rosemary, and sear in the Dutch oven (work with me, people. I'm going for alliteration here).  This would have been lovely, had there been any garlic in the house.  Additionally, I ran into one little problem.

The Dang Chicken had stuff stuffed into its nether regions.

For the record people: I can't.do.it.  I have never done it.  Every Thanksgiving it is the Wonder Hub's sworn duty to (cringe, shudder) stick his hand into the nether regions of the turkey while I hide in the other room.  

When I realized that there was stuff, I did the only thing I could possibly do.  I begged for mercy.

Charlotte stepped in without batting an eye and dealt with the Dang Chicken.  I did not leave the room.  Actually, I did not leave her side.  I stood there making gagging noises while she...did it.

So.  No garlic.  No burning desire to drive to the nearest store, be irritated by the fact that I can never find anything, be irritated by the fact that there are never actual checkers, only self-check lanes, be irritated by the fact that I can never get through the dang self-check lane without messing something up and needing help (thus eliminating all value of self-check and irritating the people lined up behind me), and finally, be irritated that although I have purchased one solitary item, my receipt is two feet long.

(Yes, I have grocery store issues.  I have commissary issues.  If I were Ma Ingalls, I would likely have issues with killing chickens and slaughtering pigs.  It is the plight of the woman who is solely responsible for the feeding of her people.)

After mentally running through the irritating scenario above, I Googled something like "whole baked chicken" and came up with this:

http://whatscookingamerica.net/Poultry/RoastedChickenVegetables.htm

(Insert drum roll......)

I am thrilled to report that it was a hit!  I used the last of the root vegetables in the crisper and served it all alongside a salad.  Some of us had it on our salad.  One of us had three plates of chicken salad.  The Least Likely to be Impressed among us offered his sincere compliments.

In the end, stuff and grocery deficits aside, you just can't write a better ending than that.

*except that you can, but only when you can't sleep because of the way you wrote it the first time.