How to get 19 meals out of a $4 chicken

So, money is tight. Not a shocker, being a single home-owner in Austin who works for the university and has student loans to pay off. Lots of them. It's the financial kiss of death.

So I bought this lovely fat chicken from the HEB the other day, on sale, and out of some mix of boredom and culinary curiosity, decided to see how far I could take it while still having tasty, more or less healthy meals. Warning: I'm a little bit of a food snob. Not bad, less picky than some people I know, but almost incapable of eating anything that comes out of a can, and utterly in love w/ cooking from scratch.

Day 1: Roast chicken with rosemary and lemon, stuffed with potatoes spiked with the same plus capers:

Verdict: Seriously yum.

Day 3 (weekend): Some people would advise you to bung the whole lot by now. I'm saying, I've still got 1 to 2 days before things get into anything like a danger zone, so.... Chicken salad with celery and sweet onion and just a touch of smoked paprika.

Verdict: Yum.

Day 3 continued: Through the entire mostly de-meated carcass of the bird (bones, but not the skin) into a pot of water and cook it out until you have a nice broth. Get what little bitty bits of the meat that you can off the bones. Chuck the bones, let the remaining lot chill in the fridge and skim the fat off the top. Reheat, add veggies (a potato, a carrot, some onion, a few green beans, happened to have some ginger, so let's see how that works w/ the flavors already baked into the bird) and finish up the cooking.

Verdict: Not bad and sort of comforting in the way home-made chicken soup would be. Skip the ginger next time. A decent experiment, but not a good fit.

I have to say my verdicts are increasingly dropping in gusto, but I'm still in the survivable mode here. Better than my college days living off of jar-sauce pasta and black beans and rice.

Meanwhile, my moneyed friends bought a deep fryer and made carrot chips dusted with salt and just a touch of smoked paprika, which ranks right up there among the tastiest fried things I've ever eaten. We decided it's the best vegan bacon substitute there could ever be, you know, if you like that kind of thing. Smoked paprika is a gift from the gods. Deep fryers, a gift from the devil. I love the political perks of the corporeal life. Always someone trying to win you over.