Chicken -- Get 2 Meals From 1 Bird

My favorite two meals to get out of a chicken are traditional homemade chicken soup and curried chicken salad. Here's how you do it:

Chicken Soup

Start with a whole roaster chicken. You'll spend about seven dollars depending on local sales. Zacky Farms is fine. Wash the chicken and reach inside to remove the guts and the neck. Toss them. Your children will love watching you do this. Prepare for screeches. Put the chicken in a very large soup pot and add water until the pot is three quarters full. Throw in the peeled cloves from a head of garlic and several peeled and quartered onions. If you have carrots, throw the in the pot. If you have celery, cut off the ends, cut them in thirds, and throw them in, too. Then add salt and pepper and cook for several hours with a lid on the pot. Stay nearby to adjust the heat and re-season with salt and pepper to taste along the way. After about three or four hours (I like to cook the chicken as long as possible.) and up to five or six if you'd like, take the pot off the heat and skim the fat off of the top. Then with a slotted spoon, remove the chicken from the pot. Put it in a big, mixing bowl. This will take you a while because the chicken will be in pieces and will be very soft from being cooked for so long. Now, you can add to the soup noodles like twisted egg noodles, bowties or penne, or you can make matzoh balls from the Manischewitz box mix (the best), then cook the soup a little longer so that your carbs are done. Then serve! If you want to spend a little extra, fresh dill, cut up in the soup at the last minute to preserve the taste, is a very elegant splurge.

Curried Chicken Salad

Put the chicken in the bowl in the fridge and the next day, go through the chicken tossing out skin, bones and anything inedible. Then dice the chicken; salt and pepper it; add mayonnaise and curry powder and mix well. Add raisins, chopped walnuts, dried cranberries and diced apples, as you like. The aroma of the curry is divine, and this is a very lovely, special chicken salad you can serve on romaine lettuce leaves, on top of a bed of lightly dressed greens or in a pita pocket or as a classic sandwich.

Total cost of two meals: Less than $20.