Good to see the old guy’s not just sitting at home though.

(Yes I’m late getting to this. Comes from moving 2000 miles away. I was thinking about hot dogs on the way home today too.)

Mmm… maybe not.

Any time I start drinking coffee, I very quickly get to the point where I drink 4 cups a day. I say, “any time”, even though I’ve only quit twice in the last 3 years.

When that happens, quitting drinking coffee really really sucks, because you get headaches and whatnot. Withdrawal is bad.

The good news is, if I drink 2-3 cups of green tea a day, I don’t get withdrawal. It’s like methadone for coffee, except it’s actually good for you instead of only being slightly less illegal and not as fun.

So, thanks to green tea I can drink coffee any time I want and then quit. Hoorah.

The bad news is, when I’ve been drinking no coffee for a week and then drink some, I get really jittery and can’t sleep. That’s when you end up posting weird blog rants on coffee and tea at 3am.

Step 0. Read all instructions first. Some notes come later but I’m too lazy to renumber.
Step 1. Slice an onion.
Step 2. Procure two roasters (chickens). Rinse with water, rub on melted butter. Add salt and pepper to taste (and then some more, for fun).
Step 3. lay sliced onion on bottom of pan a nice lasagna pan. [Digression: eat leftover lasagna and clean first).
Step 4. Crush a head worth of garlic. put some in the chicken [note: this is easier before you butter it]. Put the rest of the garlic in with the onions. Also, if you have some rosemary, put some inside each chicken. Yumm…..
Step 5. Roast at 425 for 90 minutes or so. This is a little long, but you’ll probably get tied up playing puzzle pirates and forget anyway, so you might as well plan for it.
Step 6. Let sit and cool for a while.
Step 7. Pour as much of the liquid from the bottom of the pan into something else (one of several standby standby tupperware containers is probably a good idea). Produces about .8L of bird-juice.
Step 8. One bird at a time, pick it up, let it drain, and cut it up. I separate obvious breastmeat (my son will eat without question day or night, hungry or not, as long as I don’t remind him onions were involved in the cooking) from extremities (wings and drumsticks I always like to save. don’t ask me why), from dark meat (“the rest”). This is the third world meat, conveniently located south of the equator (unless you roast your chickens upside down, which I sometimes do by accident).
Step 9. Save the onions and garlic. They’re always tasty on something.

Put all this stuff in the fridge.

Step 10. Bones go in a crock pot. Cover with water and some prepared chicken stock (roasters make lousy stock). boil for a while so the leftover meat comes off the bones.
Step 11. Remove bones. Discard.
Step 12. Add rice or noodles, vegetables, more meat, lots of salt, and whatever else makes chicken soup taste good. [Note: these steps are a work in progress].

Makes: 3L meat, .8L juice (pre-gravy), lots of soup. Takes a while. Plan it around laundry day or something.