It's been a learning process...

...with this whole chicken thing.

First, I learned that chicken is very expensive if you don't buy it on sale - so I learned to never buy chicken if it's not on sale
Second, I saw that Ultra Foods had this thing called "split chicken breasts" on sale for $0.89/lb! Great deal, I thought! When I got to the store, it had skin AND bones on it. I left the store without buying chicken.
Third, I went to work a few days later and Arline was talking about chicken, so I asked her about this "split chicken breast" thing. I had no idea what to do with it and she taught me that you can just take the skin and bone off! Imagine that :-)
Fourth, I bought this split chicken breast at Ultra a few weeks later and had a miserable, MISERABLE time attempting to skin, debone, cube and cook it all in the same night - MISERABLE. I probably threw a small temper tantrum and vowed never to buy it again.
Fifth, I read about freezing meal-sized portions of cooked, cubed chicken and thought "Maybe I can do this."
Sixth, I bought more split chicken breasts, spent an evening skinning, deboning, cubing and cooking and had lots of cubed chicken for meals! I thought, "I kinda like this whole split chicken breast thing."
Seventh, I learned how to make turkey broth from a turkey carcass at Thanksgiving thanks to my mom and I loved having that broth around to make soups and for other deliciousness.
Eighth, I continued to throw away my chicken carcases (Kody told me to call them bones though because carcass is gross). Until I read this ...

Ninth, I learned how to use ALL of the chicken from the split chicken breasts!!

So here's my split chicken breast adventure from last night. The result was amazing! Three basically ready meals, plus a crockpot full of chicken broth!!

A crockpot full of six chicken breast bones. I added Italian seasoning, vinegar (which I learned pulls the calcium out of the bones and into the broth) and some garlic.

All the cut up chicken! It was pretty gross and I'm sure I left quite a bit of chicken on the bones, but I did my best! I read on the post you can get a breast and tenderloin from these chickens, but I pretty much torn up the chicken and only saw about two or three actually tenderloins. Oh well.

My three meals! I made some cooked, cubed chicken for chicken enchiladas or some other meal like that. Then I froze a honey lime chicken (I copied from my $5 dinner lady, like I basically copied everything from her blog post) and some Chicken Adobo (a recipe from Kody's mom)! Both will probably be marinading for about a week or two rather than the normal overnight, but hopefully they'll still turn out well.

Here's all the yummy chicken broth!
Pretty successful night, if I do say so myself :-)