Chicken, but not yet

Today is my birthday. And to celebrate, I've lost yet another pound in weight; the scales tip in at 167.6lbs: under 12 stone, and the point at which any further weight loss should start to show in all the places that are important on a non-nudist beach (people don't tend to look much at each other on nudist beaches, so extra poundage isn't so important there). I know, it's a bit fast, so I moved the scales around and cross-checked, but it's definitely 167.6; the only other possible explanation is water retention, which could have happened; after all, I'm drinking enough of the stuff now. Food today: 1 bowl SpecialK plus milk. I machine hotchocolate, 2 machine coffees, 1 1" square of chocolate cornflakes, 1 bowl carrot&coriander soup, 1 large bread roll. 3 small horrid chocolates, 1 square G&B organic 72% chocolate (thanks Amanda), 1 slice bread+butter, 1 small bowl chilli&rice. I've been to BodyPump class to counteract all those chocolate hits today.

Today's plan is to cook the roast chicken from the book's title. Hwsgo picked the recipe for this week: he seemed to spend quite a lot of time muttering "not that one, I want to try it" under his breath as he flicked through the book.

So chicken it is, but first to find the chicken. I'd heard about a local farm shop that sold, amongst other good things, game. And it was nextdoor to the yard that I needed to buy some building supplies from. So off I went, and... no farmshop. To be fair, the farm runs a pet-your-food-before-you-eat it attraction from march to november, so I may have just gone there out of season, but I couldn't even find evidence of a shop having been there. On the plus side, if I ever need to find a geophysical survey company, there's one hiding in the farmyard; on the minus side, I still had to find a chicken. So it being my birthday, I dropped in at the supermarket starting with S. A duck, lots of inorganic chickens, and a space where the organic happy chickens would be if they had any. I hadn't realised just how small my local Sainsburys was until that point. I couldn't face Tescos in rush hour, so home I went to spend some quality time with the washing-up. And spotted '1 chicken' on the freezer list. Voila: one free-range organic chicken of almost exactly the right weight, on the side defrosting ready to be cooked tomorrow. It must be my birthday.