Waiting on Vienna: Happy Farmers Market Chicken

Who knew that a naked, slightly shriveled, little chicken sitting in a bag of brine in our fridge would completely occupy my thoughts for an entire workday? That I would be overcome with the anticipation of my first whole chicken roasting adventure that meaningful work would be hard to come by? I sure hope that our dinner guests tonight understand the gravity of the situation but given that they are kind and loving souls, I’m sure that they will neither laugh at my enthusiasm nor think me insane. But that’s just because, at this point, they know that I’m insane.

The chicken obsession took root last weekend while visiting my parents. My mom started a job in VT recently as has been raving about the Norwich Farmers Market for months now. I was very eager to visit as we rarely have the leisure time to wander farmers markets in our area (most are during the work week and end at 6pm so when we have gone we’re usually racing around to snap thing up before everything gets shut down). Plus it was a lovely excuse to have my mom and aunt show off their still newish home and for us to get some quality time together.

I went in with a plan, and for the most part stuck with it. I’ve been increasingly interested in finding humanely raised meats for our diet but because of convenience issues haven’t put too much effort into actually following through with this. The farmers market was the perfect opportunity to get started following through on this! Many vendors had free range chickens, organic eggs and grass fed beef and my mom even picked up some Guinness elk sausages for Kyle and my dad. (I tried the elk and it was good, but one bite was enough.) After a completely humiliating encounter with one chicken vendor (I certainly didn’t know that we were talking whole chickens at first, although that seems pretty stupid in retrospect. Not to worry, I ran away from her to a much kinder woman with more reasonably priced poultry), I was the beaming owner of my very own 3.19lb whole roaster. YAY!

With friends coming for dinner tonight, I decided that it was the perfect time to debut the bird. I really have no idea if this is going to work or not but I’m hoping that the waxed beans with mint and steamed broccoli (also from the Norwich F.M.) will be enough if the roasting goes terribly wrong. I’m also planning blondies for dessert. I figure that if all else fails, putting guests into a sugar coma is as good a way as any to end an evening.

***

So, thinks went relatively well. But I've learned several valuable lessons.
1.) Cooking past my bed time isn't a great idea. I ended up brining the chicken's butt all day instead of the breast.
2.) I have no freaking idea how to carve a chicken. Next time I'll look that up before mutilating the bird before our horrified guests.
3.) 3.19lbs of chicken is not enough for 4 adults when the hostess is incapable of getting all the meat off the bones and nobody likes legs.
4.) Anything with a stick of butter and cup of brown sugar is sure to be delicious. The blondies were soooo good!