If you’ve been reading here for awhile, you know that my hubby is the chef and the family. When it’s my turn to cook, it’s leftovers or something really simple (cereal anyone?) (Please note, I am a pretty good baker, but should be our main source of eating!) Anyway, Amy from Park City Girl is looking for new things to cook for dinner, so i thought I’d share a recipe for roast chicken that EVEN I can do and not screw up!

Awesome Roast Chicken

One 2 ½ – 3 lb whole chicken

salt & freshly ground black pepper

¼ c fresh herbs (basil, parsley, thyme), finely chopped

olive oil

1 lemon, halved

4 bay leaves

2 sprigs of fresh rosemary

1. Preheat the oven and a roasting tray to 425^o. Wash the chicken inside and out and pat it as dry with paper towels. Rub the cavity with salt. Slide your fingers under the skin over the breast the breast meat. Stuff some of the chopped herbs under this skin. Rub the bird with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Make slashes (3 or 4 for each side) in the legs and thighs (cut to the bone.) Rub herbs into the slash, over the bird and in the cavity. Place the lemon, bay and rosemary in the cavity. Tie the legs together.
2. Heat the roast pan (no rack) in the oven. Add some olive oil to the pan. My pan is non-stick so I only use a few tablespoons. Put the chicken, breast side down, in the pan and cook for 5 minutes. Turn the bird on one side and cook for another 5 minutes. Repeat until all sides are browned and the bird is breast side up. Cook for 1 hour or until done..
3. You can add parboiled small potatoes to the pan to roast in the juices.
4. Allow the bird to rest before serving.

We’ll roast 3 or 4 at a time, and then have lots of chicken to do other things with (pot pie is one of my favorites). And of course, my hubby makes a stock with the bones,  one of the secrets to his awesome cooking!

I don’t have a picture of roast chicken, but I think this little birdie from my Branch & Bird series will do:

Well, I’ve really had fun with this little series, and I hope it shows! I’ve had some great comments from y’all this week, so if you’d like to buy one or more of these little gems, make sure to read through to the end of the post, where there are details on how my blog readers get 1st dibs! (Look away then if a commercial offends you!)

I truly am a quilter at heart – I LOVE taking smaller units and composing them into larger pieces, over & over again. I also enjoy figuring out ways to mount my little art quilts to make them easy to display…what I did with these was quilt the details through the top, a layer of batting, and then a layer of peltex, something they use to stiffen baseball cap brims. The peltex adds a a bit more definition to the quilting, and makes the quilts stiff enough to stand propped up everywhere, and hang nice and flat. After the quilting is done, a layer of fabric on the back covers it up, then stitch on a hanging loop and fuse on a label:

I then had fun playing with them, coming up with all sorts of fun combinations…it was very hard to STOP!

All over the internet, people have little clotheslines with small bits of inspiration pinned to them. This is how I’ve been envisioning my little birds…and my friends, the vision in my head matches what I see!

While I was trying in vain to come up with an idea of how to show them off in a room setting, lovely Linda of a La Mode Stuff commented on how nice the would look over a headboard! Shazaam, perfect idea – thanks Linda!

So, if you need to see more birdies, I’ve had some fun putting together a gallery with Adobe Bridge. 

OK, commercial time, feel free to look away. A couple of folk have asked if they are going up in my Etsy shop. I’ve got a couple of big shows coming up, so no, they won’t be in my Etsy shop for awhile, BUT if you need to have one, or more…email me with your choices: Candy(at)CandiedFabrics(dot)com and we’ll arrange payment and shipping.

They’re $20 each, with 10% off the total purchase when you buy 3 or more. Shipping will be $4.75, and if you’d like I can throw in some hemp cord & mini clothespins for a couple of bucks too. I’d love for my faithful blog readers to have 1st pick!

Bird & Branch Gallery

Finally – here are the navy! I’ve been having great fun with photographing all the birds in all sorts of configurations…tune in tomorrow to see them!