1 Chicken: 16 Servings

I had a dilemma. I needed to make a single whole chicken feed my family of five for two days. We had been going through some thin times and I had been as creative as I could while trying to stretch every dollar to it's limit. Well, as it turned out, we had more than enough for 2 dinners, we had enough leftovers for lunch on the third day!

Ingredients:

• 1 whole chicken
• 1 bag of egg noodles
• 6 baby carrots
• 2 ribs of celery
• 1/2 small onion
• salt and pepper to taste
• can of vegetables
• non-stick cooking spray

Directions:

Here's how I did it:

I rinsed the chicken under cold running water and placed it in a small roasting pan that I sprayed with cooking spray. I poured 1/4 of a cup of cold water over the chicken and seasoned it with salt and pepper. Then I put in in the oven at 350 degrees F and roasted it just until the juices ran clear.

After letting the chicken rest for a little while, I cut off both legs, both thighs, and both breasts. Then I put 1/4 of the bag of noodles into boiling salted water, cooked them until tender. Drained them and served them with the chicken after tossing them with a little butter and salt and pepper. I also served them with a can of peas I had in my cabinet. (This made 6 servings).

I saved the chicken carcass with the wings intact and left them in the juices in the roasting pan and stored them in the fridge overnight.

The next day, I put the chicken carcass along with the cooking juices in a Dutch oven on the stove top and added 4 cups of water. I boiled the chicken for 15 minutes to make a good broth and then removed the chicken from the water. I let the chicken cool enough to handle and removed all of the meat from the bones and put it back in the dutch oven. I chopped the celery, onion and carrots and added them to the water. I brought the chicken mixture back to boil and reduced the heat, allowing the mixture to simmer until the vegetables were fork-tender. Then I stirred the remaining egg noodles into the broth and continued to cook until done. Add additional salt and pepper to taste. (This made 10 generous servings).

By Tammy from Berea, Kentucky