whole roasted chicken

I've got my friend Kelly fooled big time, but the truth is -- I'm not a very good cook.
I love to cook, and I love to eat, but I'm still learning my way around the kitchen a bit.

Since I had Luke and have become a mostly-stay-at-home-mom, I've become more and more adventurous in this department and I enjoy cooking more and more.

The other day I was in the meat department at HEB and they had their whole organic chickens on "manager's special," which means they're about to expire so you'd better buy them now.  The chicken was a great price so I put him in the buggy and took him home.  I usually just cook with chicken breasts, so I thought it would be fun to spice things up a bit.

I've never roasted a whole chicken before, but I've done Thanksgiving turkeys several times, so I figured - how hard could it be?

My friend Ashley is a great cook so I called her and she gave me some tips for roasting this bird to perfection. 

I chopped up tons of vegetables, made a beautiful little bed for the bird, seasoned him up really well, stuffed him with lemon and garlic and other goodness, laid him in my dutch oven, and put him in to roast.  He looked and smelled wonderful.  I was so proud that I took his picture.

We sat down to eat and I proudly began cutting him up into servings.  I was heartily disappointed to discover that the chicken had no breasts.  He had legs and thighs but when I tried to cut into the top, salivating over the crispy-skinned well-seasoned hunk of white meat I was going to find, I just got bone.  There was no white meat. 

Damn bird.  Defective.  No wonder he was on sale.  The "manager" should have warned me.  I was so disappointed.

We ate the dark meat and the veggies -- which both had excellent flavor -- and it looked like we'd polished off the entire chicken.  I was a little embarrassed that my family of three had eaten an entire chicken, but hey, it was a faulty bird afterall. 

After dinner, I went to throw the thing away and as I lifted him up out of the pot something caught my eye. 

There they were - chicken breasts.

I had cooked that stupid bird upside down and the good parts were hiding underneath the whole time.
This might sound really ridiculous to all of you seasoned chicken roasters (no pun intended) but I had no idea. 

I think I'll stick to plain jane chicken breasts from now on.  That way, I'll always know where to find them!