This meal was almost completely local! I love it! The only non-local thing (aside from olive oil and salt) was the chopped cilantro in the corn.The chicken is from Springer Mountain Farms in north Georgia. Though not organic, their chickens are "all-natural," meaning no antibiotics, no chemicals, no animal byproducts. According to their website, "the standards given for Organic production allow the use of antibiotics and chemical medicines the first days of life if so desired, allow the use of animal by-products, do not address food safety or animal treatment, and do not require testing of soil, water, and feed."
I've become a huge fan of roasting a whole chicken each week. For one thing, nothing on that bird goes to waste. I use all the bones, skin, giblets and the carcass to make soup stock after we've picked all the meat off. I was truly offended when a chicken I bought recently had a completely empty cavity - no heart, no neck, no liver! I need those things for my stock!! Well, I survived, but have not yet made stock from that carcass, so we'll have to see if it suffers.It's also handy to have already cooked (and shredded) chicken in the fridge for things like a BBQ Chicken Pizza, tacos or nachos, or a quick salad topper. When you can get four or five meals out of one chicken, it's pretty economical, too.
When I roast a chicken, I usually brown it in olive oil for about ten minutes to get the skin nice and crispy and then pop it in the oven with white wine and broth. This time I tried something different and used a bottle of beer instead of wine. The flavor wasn't overpowering, but it was noticeably less tasty than with the wine. This time I stuffed the cavity with fennel stalks; they didn't give that much flavor, but they were fragrant.
While the chicken was roasting, I threw four stalks of corn in the oven, husks and all. After about 30 minutes the ears of corn were perfectly cooked. I cut the corn off the cobb and tossed it with chopped cilantro and a little salt. Delicious!
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