Second-Year Whole Roast Chicken

Mar 30, 2015

It’s time to write up our weekly metaphorical blackboard one last time. And I thought given (a) the recent end to the strike and (b) the usual chaos that is the last two weeks of school, like the final week of last term, I’d let our faculty and staff off the hook and provide my own recipe. Besides, I was feeling a bit selfish. I wanted the final instalment of the column all to myself.

As I approach my graduation this June, I want to share a recipe that encapsulates my four years at UTM. It was a tough choice. I’ve cooked a lot of meals since I started my undergrad.

From first year, there’s the salmon sandwich recipe that, much to my first roommate’s disapproval, I made every week in our shared bathroom, or the hummus recipe that sent me to the emergency room at Credit Valley for stitches. There’s the oatmeal I made almost every day of my time here in Mississauga. Or the spicy hot chocolate that I enjoyed while I packed my lunch every night of third year. Even in just the last few months, I’ve encountered such gems as the simplest, quickest chocolate peanut cake ever, which I threw together Sunday nights in the fall in anticipation of the stressful week ahead.

Ultimately, though, the meal I was most proud of was the roast chicken I prepared for myself the summer before second year. I was living entirely on my own in Stratford, Ontario for a summer internship. My parents moved me into a rental property at the end of April with a fridgeful and freezerful of ingredients, including a whole chicken. Up till then I’d been living in OPH with only a microwave to cook with. Nonetheless, one rainy Sunday my second week in Stratford following my dad’s recipe below, I cooked the bird. It was so simple, yet it made me feel like such an adult. I proudly ate a portion that night on the little wicker table in my kitchen listening to “Somebody that I Used to Know”. I turned the leftovers into a batch of soup.