cook: sheet pan supper of lemon rosemary roasted chicken

It was a night off from the gym and for doing a bit of grocery shopping. Like Ina Garten's husband, Jeffrey, my Patrick also likes a roast chicken dinner, which is my go-to order whenever we used to go out to a restaurant for an evening meal. And so I had to buy the lemon rosemary spatchcocked chicken at Trader Joe's when it was that close to 5:00 p.m. and dinner has to go into the oven like now. Good thing I looked in my vegetable bin and saw the last of a bag of green beans. I also didn't want to have to bake or mash a potato because we just had mashed potatoes last week and wanted baked potatoes later this week to accompany the tri-tip I had also bought at Trader Joe's. And so sweet white corn with lots of Irish butter, my favorite, to the rescue.

I suffered a bit of sticker shock at a $50 grocery bill for a marinated chicken, a tri tip roast and two bottles of Chardonnay which would've been half that a couple years ago. However, I've always thought in comparison to Europe, we pay too little for food in this country, and it's made even more sense to me why food is so cheap given our system of industrialized farming and high-calorie, unhealthy processed food.        

In retrospect, I should have bought a whole chicken and butterflied it myself and then given it a good salt rub before roasting. Next time I'll opt for the more time-consuming and less convenient roast chicken. 

Not the usual meatless Monday, but a yummy and comforting supper nonetheless. Tomorrow is Taco Tuesday, and I'll be resorting to convenience again as I had bought two different seafood taco kits of shrimp and fish.