How to roast a chicken

Over the years, I have collected so many roast chicken recipes and I love flipping thru them thinking one of these days,  I would go ahead and roast one.  But I live fairly close to Citarella's and the roast chicken there is not so bad (not as great as the Chirping Chicken on the upper west side) and it is so convenient, so we have roast chicken once a week from Citarella's.

But yesterday, the weather was so great (low 50s in this time of the year), we walked across the Central Park to the museum for Ev and went to the farmer's market outside the museum hoping to find Russian Kale (this family's favorite).  I did not find the kale but there is an organic, free running chicken stand.  Inside the ice cooler, there were few chicken left and I thought that today is the day to roast that chicken.

$28 dollars later, as my husband carried that chicken across the park home, I was thinking how in the world that organic free running chicken is that heavy (almost 7 lb.).  I had to defrost the chicken and it was 4 p.m. on Sunday afternoon and there just wasn't enough time to have dinner ready in 2 hours.  So we headed over to Citarella's.

This morning,  I told myself that today is the day to roast that chicken.  As the defrosting process continued,  I expedited to put the chicken under the water, went to run some errands (always tons of them), had Korean food first in Korean town (I can't get enough of Korean hot soup).  At 1 p.m.  I followed the advices of Michael Ruhlman of The Splendid Table and Melissa Clark, cleaned the bird, dried the bird, stuffed it with lemon and herb, tied the legs (it took me awhile to find the twine and tie the legs together, hey not that easy), heated the oven, checked the instruction again because I could not figure out which side of bird I should face up.   Now it is in the oven and my kitchen is a mess.

I forgot to mention that I did not use the cast iron pan because I don't have one.  Although I intended to get one yesterday online.  Then I started doing extensive research of the pan and found out that there is a brand called Griswold and it was a legend and people collect this cast iron pan.  This Griswold pan is supposed to be lighter than the Lodge one.  Why is that we can't find this Griswold in the store if it is so much more superior than Lodge?

Anyway,  I want to show you the picture above is the view of laying underneath the big blue whale in the American Museum of Natural History.  It was great.  Now, I want to have a vacation in Mexico.