Rhubarb and chicken

No, not in the same recipe.

I bought one of those rotisserie chicken this weekend... USED IT IN THREE MEALS!

Meal one: I bought one of those cheap cheese $3 pizzas at the store, and then used the chicken breastmeat to dress it up (along with some tomatoes and feta). If you slice the tomatoes on top of the pizza (creating sort of a shell), it keeps the chicken moisture in! We then put some avocado on the finished pizza (after it came out of the oven). DELICIOUS.

Meal two: Tortilini was on sale for $2.50/pack, so I cooked that up with some of the chicken. Used a bit of the feta, then put in some of my homemade, jarred-up pasta sauce. Yum.

Meal three: Put the chicken carcass in my big crock pot on high for about 4 hours. Result: 6 quarts of chicken stock. WOW! And, then I could peel the rest of the meat off the bones really easily. Added in some of my pre-canned carrots and celery, put in potatoes, rice, pasta and tofu, the rest of the chicken meat, and voila. Soup.

At $4.99 -$6.99 (depending on if on sale) per chicken, the rotisserie chicken really has made me re-think buying chicken stock. You can also control the saltiness this way. For 2 liters the darn stuff in the store runs you $5, when it's on sale. Shoot! And I got so much more of it this way. I think I will make and freeze the next batch.

Also, rhubarb was on sale this week at our local farm. We made enough to make 2 pies-- one for my work and one for B's... and then some little pies for us in the cupcake tins. Here's the recipe I used... It was ok. I think next time I will turn to more of an apple crumble recipe for rhubarb. This was ok, just it turned out pretty sticky. BUT, it was super-simple, so that is definitely a benefit on it's side.

2 cups diced fresh rhubarb
2/3 cup sugar
1 tablespoon flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon grated orange peel
.
Topping:
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 cup shortening

Toss all the rhubarb stuff together and mix. For the topping, mix together the dry and then the wet, and then combine. I think I mixed mine for too long; it turned into almost a dough. SO I just make it into small quarterish-sized patties and put that on top the rhubarb.Worked nicely. You may want to put some more sugar in the topping.

It tasted so good with ice cream. And, we made all of it with $4 of rhubarb. Yay for sales.

NPR recently ran a radio series on "how to cook for 4 for $10." I think that's misleading. If you carefully budget, you can use items multiple times. The chicken, for example... $5 chicken, $2.50 tortilini, $3 pizza. Other miscellaneous ingredients: Probably about $5. So, for about $15.50... let's even round that up to $20, we have three meals. PLUS, the soup there is at least 4 meals for 4 people leftover. So that's 7 meals for $20. And the soup could be used in a cassarole or something like that too. Anyway, I'm just saying; focusing on one meal is a bit expensive and narrow-sighted.