Oven Baked Chicken

After about twelve days of battling with an UTI without taking any antibiotics, I am finally feeling like a person again. Time to get back on the health track of eating.

We love chicken in our house. I think we average about 3-4 meals with chicken in any given week. One of our favorite chicken meals is the oven-baked chicken.

I had always bought the cheapest whole chicken from Trader Joe's but since we started this new eating plan I gave the organic, free range whole chicken a try and all I could say is that we are hooked!

Since we do have a food budget, I wanted to see how far I could push with this chicken.

After everyone has his/her share on the original dinner night (basically one breast, two thighs/drumsticks and all the giblets), I still can manage to pull all the meats from the chicken besides saving the other side of the breast for Robert's lunch. I used those pulled meats either for breakfast or an easy lunch for Peter the next day.

Then came the beautiful part - I put all the left overs - bones, little pieces of meat and the juice that came with the baking - into a medium soup pot and cover them with some water just to the top of the bones and close the lid and made some broth out of them. After it was boiled, I turned off the fire and let it sit on the stove top to cool off.

I then transfer the broth into a big bowl and cover it and put it in the refrigerator  The gelatin from the broth was so healthy and delicious (just be sure you don't use too much water when boiling the baked bones). I will then either filter out the bones and bits or I just reheat them on stove top and add about 2 oz. of pasta and some green onions and some romaine lettuce for a quick simple E (energizing) lunch. I could still get the last bit of the chicken meat from the broth (amazing!) so I did not have to add any more protein in it.

Yes, the chicken is a bit pricey (about $12-$14 a piece) but so, so worth it as not only we are nourished with its goodness but can use it for more than one meal.

If I want, I could also use all the left over meat to make a chicken taco or enchilada dinner for another night instead of lunches the next day. Now, this is totally down my alley of good eating on a budget.

This is the original meal - nom, nom!

This is the gelatin looking broth just removed from the fridge - I actually used half of it for my lunch today and will probably use the other half tomorrow (you can kind of see the chicken meats on the bones in this picture).