Sunday Football Day

Game day menu: roasted chicken with roasted potatoes, carrots, parsnips, baby cabbages, and homemade cranberry-apple sauce.  Not your typical Vikings-watching-lazy-nap-on-the-couch-day meal.  Fresh from our baking class the day before, I was feeling adventurous.  Everyone should know how to roast a chicken, right?  We had gone to the Minneapolis farmer's market the day before (last time for the season- sad) and picked up the carrots, parsnips (new to me), and baby cabbages.  The vendor also was selling brussels sprouts, which were my first choice, but told me that the baby cabbages taste sweeter.  And they're just adorable.  It was probably the cuteness factor rather than the promised taste that made me fork over my $3. 

Step One:
Open up chicken.  Remove baggie of guts.  Rinse of chicken.  Make chicken wings do a little dance.  Pat dry.

Step Two:
Set chicken on wire rack of a roasting pan.  Put 2 Tbsp butter up chicken's...ah...cavity?  Yes.  Drizzle about 1-2 Tbsp olive oil on chicken and rub in with about 3 teaspoons each poultry seasoning, and pepper, with a few pinches of salt.  Loosely cover chicken with tin foil.  Place in a preheated oven at 350.

Step Three:
Meanwhile, wash & peel/chop/slice whatever veggies you want (keep in mind that the smaller you chop the veggies, the faster they'll cook).  Dump in a bowl and pour 1-2 Tbsp olive oil over and mix so all veggies have just a light coating of oil.  Spread out on a rimmed foil-lined pan.  Since the veggies will only take about a half hour and the chicken will cook for over an hour, go ahead and clean up the mess you just made.  Or go catch up on "Real Housewives of Atlanta."  Your call.

After the chicken's baked for about 45 minutes, go ahead and stick in your veggies.  Since I didn't have enough room on my baking sheet for the carrots, parsnips, and onions, I dumped those in the bottom of the roasting pan to cook themselves in the chicken drippings.  Chicken drippings = fat, so this is not a low-cal way of cooking veggies.  Be warned.  You can also remove the tin foil so that now the skin has a chance to brown.

The chicken is finished when the internal temp reads at least 165 degrees, at around 1 hour 15 minues.  Veggies are done when browned (you might want to flip them halfway through cooking time). 

While the chicken cooled a bit, I whipped up a cranberry apple sauce.  Complicated?  Naaah.  Dump a package of fresh cranberries into a smallish pot.  Add 1 cup OJ and 2/3 cup sugar.  Stir over medium-high heat.  I think this is fun to make- it's like the fruit equivalent of Rice Krispies- the cranberries burst & pop as you cook them.  I decided to toss in about a cup of chopped apples too.  Cook until mixture becomes bubbly, thick, and all the cranberries have bursted.  Serve hot or cold.

There you have it.  Awesome lunch, plus 2 days worth of leftovers + 2 cups of shredded chicken bits to freeze.  I think this is the culinary equivalent of a touchdown, plus the bragging dance in the endzone.  Too bad I forgot to add the sugar to the pumpkin pudding I made.  Penalty flag.