I'm back! And cooking a WHOLE CHICKEN!

I didn't intend to take a break from blogging, but I am most definitely back from "vacation." Between illness, and not being home, I haven't had time to blog. I've barely even been cooking! We had all of our holidays away from home, so I haven't been in the kitchen much.
That is changing now. :)

I have never liked raw poultry. I can handle raw beef, raw venison, raw fish... just don't give me a raw bird. I find it disgusting. I don't like handling raw chicken breasts, so the thought of a whole raw chicken really bothered me, to say the least. Plus, it was just intimidating! So when I saw the Happy Housewife post this, I was pretty excited. Cook a chicken in a crock pot? I just rinse the chicken, dump it in, and walk away for hours? No oven or anything? Hmm... I can try that.
(Granted, I still have to handle the chicken, but this takes away a lot of the intimidation.)

So, we got a whole chicken (85 cents a pound? AWESOME), got a new bigger crockpot (thank you Mama for Christmas money), and tried it!

I put the chicken in at about 8 this morning, sprinkled some spices on it, took it out at about six when I got home, and it was beautiful. Cooked completely (which is a huge fear of mine with cooking meat)--in fact, so completely that it basically fell apart when I took it out of the crockpot.

And let's not forget the fact that my house smells great.

(Isn't my hubby so amazing? I didn't even ask him to help, he just walked in the kitchen as I was pulling the chicken out, helped me get it out, and started tossing bones and the skin back in the crockpot.)

We ate some of the meat right away (yes, it smelled that amazing), put some in a casserole (tomorrow's post!), gave a few bites to the puppy, and put the rest in the freezer.

(This is what it looked like right when I took it out... I had it in for so long, it was falling apart.)

I left all the juices in the crockpot, and added the bones when we de-boned it. Then I added 5 cups of water, and put it back on low. In the morning, I will have lovely chicken broth--ready for soup, and whatever other use later!

(Doesn't Remus look so happy to be cleaning the cutting board?? :) Then he sat and looked at me, practically asking for more. LOL. )