Meatless Monday...A Rotisserie Chicken 3 Ways!

I know this title sounds a little confusing, but hang with me! One of the reasons I chose to start Meatless Mondays was to save money. One way I like to do this is to purchase a rotisserie chicken and use it for 3 meals. The third one is my meatless Monday meal, but we will get to that in a minute!

One note about rotisserie chickens- I like to buy mine at Sam's. They are the cheapest and the biggest. Some of the chickens I have seen at Kroger or Tom Thumb can be pretty small and more expensive. You need a pretty substantial sized bird to make this work. I would try Walmart if you don't have access to a Sams.

First thing I do is take all the meat off the bones and seperate it into dark and light meat. I use about 1 1/2 of the breast meat to make chicken salad. I can usually get 3-4 lunches out of this amount. Here is my recipe. Again, I don't measure so you can just add stuff to your liking.

Chicken Salad

chopped chicken

red grapes, halved

chopped pecans

chopped celery

salt and pepper

equal parts of mayonnaise and sour cream

For the rest of the chicken, I make some sort of main dish for dinner. This week I made Ritz Cracker Chicken. I made a half recipe which served about 4, but that is the perfect amount for us and a leftover lunch for Rocky. I added some peas just to get in some extra veggies, the recipe doesn't normally call for that. Here is the recipe link if you are interested in a quick and easy meal. Again, forgot to take a pic before it went into the lunch container!

Now this is where Meatless Monday comes into play! I take the remaining bones and skin of the chicken and place it in a stock pot with celery, onion, carrots, salt, and black peppercorns. I fill the pot up with water, enough to completely cover the chicken, and boil it for a long time. At least an hour. After it is finished, pour through the strainer and you have delicious homemade chicken stock! Here is how I used my stock-

Italian Vegetable Soup

1 can italian style diced tomatoes

1 can regular diced tomatoes

onion

celery

carrots

mushrooms

zuchinni

frozen chopped spinach

1 can kidney beans, rinsed and drained

green beans

salt and pepper to taste.

Put all this stuff into about half a pot of stock. The other half of the stock can be placed in a container and frozen for another soup. You can also add cheese tortellini to this soup to make it heartier. Serve with a sprinkle of parmesan cheese and some crusty bread. Enjoy!