Roast Chicken for les Paresseaux

Usually, I don't pick the easy route. Like, why drive when you can bike through the dark, wet morning? Or buy sliced and bagged bakery bread if you can spend your Saturday kneading, punching down, and waiting by the oven? Or walk the beach if you can be in the water, eating bottom beneath a giant wave?

The above list sounds cute, happy-go-lucky, even. Well step back because there lurks a dark underbelly. (Can a dark underbelly lurk? Probably.) The dark underbelly's a tense one, a tich manic, a lot uptight, basically an undiagnosed anxiety-plagued soul. If you're after a five am wake up call, don't pick the easy road because you'd rather be wide-eyed in the dark running through your day, mentally confirming the purple-pants selection, sticky-noting your brain with don't-forget-to's, while worrying that you're up to early and so must inevitably crash sometime this afternoon and in that case how will you get it all done?

It's rough.

But don't worry, I'm chilling out, drinking more tea, pausing to enjoy the moment -- like the feel of hot water in a sink of dishes, or the darkness of an early morning ride, or the scent of Borax as I scrub out the tub. Nope, not an easy task, living in the moment, but I'm on it. Oh wait, I'm trying to be a little less on it.

Which brings me to dinner and how I took a chicken out of the freezer on Sunday, and so it was all thawed out today and ready for the oven. I had Dorrie Greenspan's lovely French cookbook in front of me. I wanted to follow the recipe that instructed a ring of dough be placed around the edge of the pot. The dough is meant to seal up the pot so everything inside becomes incredibly delicious. Dorrie advises the reader to make a big splash with her guests by breaking the dough seal at the table and allowing the mouthwatering aromas to waft forward. Well, I didn't have any guests, just potatoes and two carrots.

A second recipe caught my eye: Roast Chicken for les Paresseux, which translates to: Roast Chicken for Lazy People. Exactly, I thought, exactly what I need.

So I stuffed everything in the pot and popped it in a 450 degree, oven looked at the clock and realized I had just enough time. I whipped into a pair of shorts and pulled my runners from beneath the heater. Thanks to Dorrie, I managed to get a ten km run in and cook dinner.

I love this new life outlook.

Really, Dorrie's recipe led me to do basically what I always do when roasting a chicken, but I did add the veg to the pot. Thanks for that, Dorrie.

Roasted Chicken with Two Veggies

1 chicken
salt and pepper
rosemary if you have it
half a lemon in two piece
4-8 cloves of peeled garlic, half whole, half diced
6 small potatoes (obviously you can choose how many potatoes you want; just don't overload the pot)

2 carrots
1 onion, quartered (or leave it out if you're not partial)

Preheat the oven to 450.

Rub the chicken all over with salt and pepper. This includes pushing your fingers under the skin over the breast and rubbing the skin of the breast. If your fingers are long, lean, and nibble like mine, also try to reach and rub under the skin over the legs. Put the whole garlic and the lemon inside the chicken.

Rub a dutch oven or pot of your choice with olive oil and put the chicken and the rosemary inside.

Toss the veggies with a little olive oil and plenty of salt and pepper and tuck them in the pot with the chicken.

Roast for 30-90 minutes depending on the size of your chick.