7 hours ago, ElainaA said:I buy a roasting chicken about once a month. Like most posters here, the first meal is simply roast chicken with potatoes and a veg or salad. I can usually get 2 more dinners - usually a pasta with chicken, mushrooms, peppers and lots of garlic, maybe a risotto, in a salad in warm weather, or shredded and mixed with lots of onions, tomato, cumin and chili and put over rice. Plus there is at least one lunch for each of us (my husband and myself). Then the bones and wing tips make stock - often frozen to use for risotto with the leftovers of the next chicken.
When she was about 12 one of my nieces wrote an essay for school about how her mother (my sister - then a divorced mother of 4 children) could make one chicken feed the family for a full week starting with small portions of roast chicken and ending with "soup" - stock made from the bones with some noodles cooked in it. I think she only stretched the truth a very small bit.
When I was cooking for my family of five on a very tight budget, I could usually make one roast chicken feed us for four nights pretty easily. First, I'd make the kids look through the entire meat section to find the biggest, fattest chicken, with a prize to the winner. I'd roast it with the usual vegetables - potatoes, carrots, celery, onions - and first night, roast chicken. Second night, some sort of chicken "stretch" dinner - chicken a la king on toast or biscuits, chicken curry on rice, chicken spaghetti, etc. Then carcass into stewing pot. I'd make a lot (at least two night's worth) of chicken soup, adding some sort of starch - noodles, rice, potatoes, etc. So, third night, "regular" chicken soup. And fourth night, change up the chicken soup to something different, so it wasn't boring. Most often, I suppose, I'd add some salsa (if I'd added rice as the starch) and make chicken tortilla soup, but sometimes I'd add cream and mushrooms (if I'd added noodles), or maybe Greek spices and lemon juice (best with the potatoes, but also perfect with rice of course).
I tried to make a really big pot of that chicken soup and, often, after four good meals, there'd be just enough left over for lunch or light supper, if I included a salad or sandwich on the side.
Our family of five in those "stretch a chicken until it squeals" days did include three smallish children. When those two boys hit their teen years, not so easy.
