Sunday Night Poor Man's Chicken

Riddle: how do you feed dinner to a family and one homeless guy in Manhattan for less than it costs to buy one Starbuck's Vente Mocha Frappucino?

Answer: buy a chicken from Whole Foods for $3.93 (I know - amazing, right?)

Don't your spending habits seem ridiculous sometimes?  For example, at times I'll agonize for ages over whether or not to buy a t-shirt for $20 but I'll drop the same amount on a movie and a bag of popcorn without a second thought.......or I'll go into Cheap Jacks and absolutely refuse to by a set of mugs for $5.99 (what a RIPOFF!) but I'll easily spend $65 in Bloomingdale's for a similar set (gosh THAT'S a good deal) - okay maybe at Cheap Jack's they have "expresso" spelled incorrectly - once I saw a "Tsunami" teapot set that really caused me to stop and think: was it in incredibly bad taste, right after the big tidal wave in the Thailand?  Or was it a really clever pun, as in "tempest in a teapot".  Food for thought, and right there in your neighborhood dollar store.....

So back to my Poor Man's Chicken - the night before my new Fresh Direct food delivery - there was that chicken that my daughter and I had bought, and a container of sun-dried tomatoes, and thank goodness a box of penne - but not much else!  What I came up with was a tapenade, of sorts, with the tomatoes, some olives, and a clove of garlic, which I pureed all together in the blender.

I owned a food processor attachment once but I never used it.  While I was taking it out of the box, the lid came off the top and the blade sliced my thumb (I won't get too detailed here, it is a food blog!)  After that I was too afraid to use it, put it in the cupboard, and eventually threw it out. 

I added chunk of unsalted butter and mashed it up with the tapenade mixture which I pushed under the skin of the chicken breast and into the thighs....and then lots of smoky Spanish paprika, salt, pepper, on top of the chicken...

...and it fit perfectly into my pre-heated amazing George Foreman roaster which my sister Caryl gave me for Christmas one year.  It's like a clay cooker but you don't have to use the oven - and it cooks a chicken perfectly because the skin comes out crisp but the meat is moist. 

Here it is (below) after about 90 minutes of cooking!

...and here you can see the layer under the skin of the sun-dried tomato tapenade - very tasty. 

Take THAT Starbucks!