Temptation struck!

Yesterday I decided to make a whole chicken for dinner...which was sitting in our chest freezer completely frozen! I wanted to know the fastest way to thaw it, so I Googled it of course! I had decided to make it at about 2:00pm and David gets home from work around 5:30pm. Turns out I knew the fastest safest way to thaw it...by letting it sit in cold water...but that would still take WAY TOO long. However, in my Google search I found that it is perfectly acceptable to cook a whole chicken (or any other meat) from frozen!!! This was enlightening for me! Now, I was concerned about a couple things. First, how was I going to get the neck and gizzards out of the inside when the thing was frozen solid, and secondly, won't it be dry from having to cook so much longer (every site that mentioned cooking from frozen said it would take about 50% longer to reach fully cooked temperature)? Even still, I rinsed the 6 lb. chicken under the faucet, sprinkled with kosher salt and pepper and put some slices of butter (this is where the temptation started) on top before starting the 4 HOUR cooking process. Yep, it actually took twice as long to cook.

Before I get to the 'temptation' just let me say that I was, after about two hours of cooking, finally able to use some tongs to get the gizzards out and it was dry, not horribly dry, but still dry. I don't recommend cooking from ice block...but in a pinch, when you 're as scatter brained as me, it'll work.

Ok, now to the temptation, which the butter triggered! I usually use margarine for my 'buttery' spread...but every now and then I'll want REAL butter, and I usually don't go light on it when I do. About an hour after I started cooking the chicken I noticed that I had left the remainder of the stick of butter I had used on the kitchen counter. It had gotten soft...soft enough to spread on something...something like a blueberry bagel...which just happened to be in the fridge! Now, this was kind of an odd thought because I NEVER have butter on my bagel, ALWAYS cream cheese. I guess I was envisioning it tasting like a blueberry muffin, who knows. All I know is that I WANTED IT NOW! I had gone pretty light on the calories for breakfast and lunch so I was confident that I could fit the bagel in without going much over my daily range, but I knew that if I smothered it in butter I was screwed...plus, I don't even like butter on a bagel! So I toasted the bagel and took a very small amount of the softened butter and put it on a bite size portion of the bagel and it wasn't the orgasmic experience I was thinking it would be and I was able to put the butter away! I then got out the cream cheese, and used only half a serving (I would normally slather the cream cheese on about as thick as the bagel itself) on the whole bagel AND gave a quarter of it to my son. I thought I handled this temptation pretty well. It was the first bad one since I started changing my eating habits a little over 2 weeks ago and I was pleasantly surprised with myself. : ) Yes, I did go ahead and have that food that wasn't in my 'plan', but I was conscious of how it would effect my calories and didn't just chow down. It's a step in the right direction!