And I'm the granddaughter of a butcher. I say that like it should help, but truth is, it probably made it worse. Until I got married and moved out of town and was forced to visit a butcher shop to get things other than free candy from my Zeidy, I was under the impression that chicken cutlets came cleaned and wrapped nicely in aluminum foil and just magically appeared in the freezer. That's how it worked in my mom's freezer. Zeidy was the chicken cutlet fairy. And I mean that in a good way. I wish I had a chicken cutlet fairy these days. And a steak fairy, but that's another story.
If I'm going to be totally honest, my mom still brings me chicken cutlets, all cleaned and ready to go and sticks them in my freezer. But not often enough. Ma! We need more chicken!
And since I am baring the chicken-stupidity part of my soul, I may as well admit that I didn't have clue how to make chicken soup before I got married. My grandmother always made it by the gallon and gave it out. But how? Since I was a little girl, I kind of always thought that maybe she squeezed the chicken. But how could that be? And how hard did she squeeze? And, ewww, I love chicken soup, but I don't wanna squeeze a chicken. And so I was floored, really floored when I learned that there was water involved. There, now my soul is bare. I feel much better.
And so when we don't have company, I pour brown rice into a really big rectangular pyrex, throw in some vegetables, like sweet potatoes and zucchini and onions, put the now clean chicken on top and pour this salad dressing over the whole thing. Add water for the rice, cover the whole thing with foil and bake at 400 degrees for 1 hour. Uncover and bake some more, until the chicken is cooked and appears to be roasted. And everyone eats - some people like rice and some people like vegetables and everyone likes chicken. And I like that there is only pan to wash after Shabbos.
Oh yeah, the salad dressing works really well on salad too, but that's so boring.