ANOTHER DINNER WITH MY CROCK-POT

Looking through my new Crock-Pot's recipe book, I thought I'd try their Lemon Herb Roasted Chicken recipe. The recipe came out great and wrote my "Excellent!" review in the recipe book so I'll know to make sure to make it again.

However, have you tried buying a chicken nowadays that is a little more than four pounds, which most recipes call for, and not a five pound chicken? Well, I've been having that problem recently. I believe that the supermarkets want you to buy bigger chickens. For them, they're making more money. Even when chickens are on sale for $.79 a pound, you have to buy a twin pack. That makes the chickens larger and the price more even if they're on sale. And for me, two chickens, or even one chicken won't fit in my freezer because it will take up too much room in the smaller freezer I have in this apartment and buying chicken and laying out over $10 at one time for one item is unacceptable.

So I asked my friendly meat department man if I could only purchase one chicken for $.79. We talked a while and told him they should have Senior Specials. He wholeheartedly agreed with me since he himself was a senior. He said it wasn't up to him but to talk to the store manager, which I did. She let me buy one chicken for $.79 a pound. When I went back to the meat department, all of the chickens were more than five pounds each. I then asked the young man at the department filling up the shelves if he could go in back to see if there was a chicken around four pounds. He came back with a 3.5 pound chicken. LOL I looked at him holding this poor little thing in his hands actually feeling sorry for the bird being so small and maybe too young to even kill for sale. I had never seen such a small bird. He said there were no 4-5 pound chickens in back.

I left the store very disappointed but remembered there was another same small supermarket chain near my apartment. I stopped in there looked at the limited amounts of chickens for selections they had and found one that was around five pounds, which I still wasn't happy with, but I took it anyways. I handed the clerk in the department a note from the manager in the previous supermarket and she very nicely gave me the discount on that chicken. It was 5 pounds 2 ounces, still a bit to big, but smaller than the other store had.

I know that what I've done was a lot of rigmarole and I got a lot of frustration out of this whole ordeal, but I was determined to make this wonderful recipe in my new Crock-Pot. I had a real taste for it. I could actually taste it in my mouth even before I made it and it even made my mouth water. I had all of the ingredients for it, so I was really not going to let anything stop me from making it now.

It was just a little bit frozen on the inside, but not enough to worry about. It did look great in the oval crock pot. It was plump, white in color and very fresh looking. I fried the inners with butter, salt and pepper and had them for lunch. I saved the neck in the freezer to add to stock in my next chicken soup recipe. Nothing goes to waste.

But look at the packaging nowadays. Smaller amounts for the same or higher prices or buy one, get one for free.

Yea, that's a joke. Buy one, get one free means they double the price for both or you have to buy more than one to get one free. Tricks of the trade I guess.