The (Cheap) Good Life--How to get a month of dinner mileage out of one chicken

You can get Rotisserie chickens at most grocery stores, and at Sams for between 6 and 8 dollars. While this isn't too expensive for a meal that feeds a whole family, it's even cheaper if you stretch it with some inexpensive ingredients to make enough food to stock the fridge and freezer with what, for the single cook at least, becomes easily a month of food. Buy the biggest chicken you can find (they're often sold by unit rather than weight), and be prepared to spend the day on a project that will save you lots of time in the long run.

So it begins...

1. Fill a largest stock pot you have with water and start it simmering. 
2. Wait until the chicken cools just enough to handle (but not all the way), and pick every last microscopic scrap of meat off of that carcass. When you think you've plundered every crevice, check again and pick some more. Put all the good meat in a bowl. Throw the skin, fatty bits, gristle, and anything else that you wouldn't want to find in a taco into the stock pot. 
3. Put the picked over carcass into the pot.
4. Simmer the entire thing on low for at least 4 hours. Sometimes I do the meat picking in the evening, stick the stock pot in the fridge, and simmer all day the next day.
5. Divide the chicken meat into three equal portions, and set aside for the later recipes. Freeze it if you're not going to use it right away.

Stock

1. When your stock is strong enough for your taste, pour about half of it through a colander, into a large pitcher or bowl. 
2. Ladle or pour the stock into muffin tins, and freeze, popping it out and sticking the portions in a big freezer bag, so that you can use your tins. Each tin section holds about half a cup of stock. Pull out the stock "ice cubes" whenever you need stock in a recipe. (2 cups of stock, salt and pepper and some orzo make a nice, comforting winter lunch).

Chicken soup

1. When you've frozen whatever you wanted to freeze of your stock, pour the rest through the colander and into a soup pot. Discard the bones and pieces you strained out. 
2. Add a portion of the chicken meat, and 1 of the following: rice, noodles, barley, lentils, diced potatoes.
3. Add at least 2 chopped/canned/frozen vegetables
4. Simmer with the soup with whatever spices you like. Bay leaves, rosemary, salt and pepper are good choices. 
5. If you used a big stock pot in the beginning, this should make a lot of soup. Store some of it in the fridge, and freeze the rest in freezer bags. I like to store some in portion sized containers in the fridge, that are easy to pull out and microwave.

Enchiladas

Ingredients:
About 20 small corn tortillas.
1 large can of enchilada sauce (I prefer the green variety).
Chicken from rotisserie
1 package of Mexican cheese (any kind of cheese will do, but you can get a small wheel of crumbly Mexican melting cheese really cheaply in the hispanic section of some grocery stores).
1 can of beans or corn (optional)

1. Mix together most of the cheese, chicken and optional corn or beans. 
2. Place a spoonful of the mixture in the middle of a tortilla, and roll the tortilla up, placing it seam down in a baking pan. 
3. When you have used up the mixture, pour enchilada sauce down the middle of the pan, and sprinkle a little extra cheese on top. 
4. Bake in at 400 degrees, until the cheese is bubbly. 

Chicken Parmesan Patties

Ingredients:
2 eggs
1/2 cup parmesan cheese (I usually use the powdered kind, because it's cheap, but of course freshly grated is always better)
1/4 cup fine bread crumbs
Chicken from rotisserie
Some kind of cheese to sprinkle on top--mozzarella is nice, or you could save a little out from the enchilada recipe.
Olive or vegetable oil

1. Mix together the eggs, parmesan, chicken, and bread crumbs. 
2. Divide the mixture equally and make patties with your hands (how many patties you make depends on the size you like). At this point I sometimes wrap up the patties, and save them in the fridge to use for lunches or quick dinners throughout the week. Not sure how it freezes, but that might work too. I suppose the thought of storing raw egg might bother some, but you do the same thing with your mayo.
3. Heat about two tablespoons of oil in a pan, and cook the patty on medium, flipping when one side is nicely browned, to cook the other side. 
4. While the patties are still in the pan, spoon some pasta sauce on each one, and sprinkle with cheese. Let the cheese melt and serve.

Packed dinner/hearty lunch idea: I used to pack this in one of those plastic boxes you get with chinese takeout, for a night class dinner. I would keep some cooked patties wrapped in the fridge, without cheese or sauce. I also made a pot of rice at the start of the week, pressed it into muffin tins, turned it out, and froze the individual portions. When I packed my dinner, I would place a patty on one side of the box, and top it with a little sauce and cheese. On the other side I would place a frozen rice portion. The frozen rice kept the patty cold through the first half of class, and when the dinner break came, I just had to pop the whole thing into the microwave for a delicious, filling meal.