Murder, She Ate

If you ask Scott what my least favorite kitchen activity is, he would tell you it's pulling meat off of bones.  Specifically, I hate pulling chicken off of the bone.  I am forever grateful that I do not raise chickens because the idea of cleaning a chicken is almost too much to bear.  If you've ever read anything by Paula Deen, she talks often about how much she loves pulling apart chickens, how she finds it relaxing.  Naps are relaxing and so are massages and reading is very relaxing, yanking breast meat off of a carcass is a little too visceral to be relaxing.

For some reason, that has started to change for me.  Since I decided to rework my family's food consumptions, I have become less squeamish with my food.  When Scott and I talked about reducing our family's food budget, I took a few days to think about it before agreeing to it.  I had to decide if I was ready to cook all of our meals for the next 30 days so I tried to roast an entire chicken, my first ever.  I was used to buying boneless, skinless chicken breasts that were individually wrapped which is as far from "gee, this used to be a part of an animal" as you can get.  Remarkably, handling that bird didn't seem to make me squeamish.  I guess when you've bought and prepared your food, you feel a pride of ownership.  It's kind of like changing a diaper: it's not something I enjoy, but when it's my own child, it ceases to be gross.

So from baby poop back to chicken thighs, how's that for a transition?  I've made a lot of chicken thighs over the past 2 weeks--4 dinners, to be exact.  I have enough chicken thighs for 5 more dinners and I think I'm getting pretty good at cooking them.  I can de-bone the meat like a pro.  It makes me feel connected to my food and to the generations of people who have cooked food similarly.  It's "real cooking," rather than "reheating."  This is cooking that can be found in a cookbook, rather than instructions on the side of a box.  This is how my grandmothers cooked.  It's like Laura Ingalls Wilder, Paula Deen, a Cavewoman and I are all holding hands around a batch of chicken thighs singing "Kumbaya" or something.  Or maybe at least we could be humming the theme song to "Murder, She Wrote."       

Here's what we ate today.

Breakfast
- SKC&G Oatmeal with Brown Sugar
- C&G Banana with Milk
Total $0.64

Lunch
- SK&C Leftover Beef Soup
- C&G Homemade Mac & Cheese (noodles, margarine, sour cream and cheese) and Milk
- S&K Tea
Total $4.06

Dinner
- SKC&G Chicken Thighs with Mashed Rutabega and Peas
- C 1/2 PB&J sandwich
- G bread
Total $2.47

Dessert
- K Cereal
- SC&G Cookies
- C&G Milk
Total $0.51

Total Spend $7.72

Tomorrow, Grant's War