Day One - Dinner

Start on a Sunday. An icky, rainy Sunday when you have some time and everyone is inside the house and smelling it up with cooking sounds appealing. If I have nothing better going on, I love to do my big grocery shop on Saturday evening. It's not the zoo that is Sunday at the grocery store and by evening they've put out most of the fresh produce in anticipation of the Sunday shoppers. And by "love" I mean "loathe a whole lot less than spending an hour at the grocery store with the crowds on Sunday or after a long day of work on Monday."

Let's start with the traditional Sunday roast chicken dinner. This sounds ambitious for the novice cook, but seriously roasting a whole chicken is nowhere near as daunting as it sounds. Also, the economic cook should get beyond the lame boneless, skinless chicken breast purchase that has been spoon-fed to us via the billion-dollar diet industry. The price of a whole, "fryer" chicken, bones, giblets and all is about the same as a package of two, butchered boneless, skinless breasts. And a whole chicken can become sandwiches, soups and stews after the original dinner has long been gobbled down. Keep portion sizes down and veggie factor high and try to erase that notion that eating a slice of dark meat will directly increase the size of your thighs by fourteen inches overnight. This will also come in handy when you learn that smearing real butter all over the chicken is involved.

Julia Child provides us with the most no-nonsense, easy recipe for roast chicken I've come across, which is entirely un-shocking. Get some butter, some herbs, some salt, pepper and a lemon and learn how to make your own roast chicken just like you used to have at your Grandmother's. Oh, and be okay with touching the damn thing. I've encountered a few cooks that have a hard time touching the raw stuff. If you're going to eat it, you need to touch it. Don't touch it like its a gross science project, touch it with respect for the animal that donated its life to your stomach. Then wash your hands.

Click on the link below for Julia's recipe on Epicurious.com, for once I didn't alter a damn thing...

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/JULIAS-ROAST-CHICKEN-WITH-LEMON-AND-HERBS-102264