Greek Roasted Chicken with Honey Lemon Drizzle: No more chopping

Sometimes the reality of life hits you in a place you least expect it. Real life is never as straightforward as you would wish it to be, and the irony of life somehow never fails to make me laugh, because sometimes that's all you have left - laughter and a lot of it.

I noticed pain in my hands well over a year ago, after the birth of son, and just assumed it would get better, go away, or spontaneously disappear. After that didn't happen I finally decided to seek some medical advice, and got some. Something about the shape of my wrists and hands (a surprisingly bony wrist on a otherwise un-bony arm) has made me prone to a type of tendonitis that affects my hands and wrists, and causes me some level of pain. After seeing a few doctors about it, one of them has concluded that it's not the typing, or the lifting of kids that has given me this condition (which is incidentally most common in people who play TENNIS and I don't play) - it's CHOPPING. Now I know for many, chopping is the part of cooking they don't enjoy, but I enjoy it to the point of loving it. Sometimes having a pile of vegetables I have to work through just gets me excited and I whip out my favorite knife and get working on it and it satisfies me. I even have a huge wonderful food processor, but in my daily life I still chop. How does a person who loves to cook live without chopping?

The answer was given to me in a challenge by friend TR. She said, "Just cook with no chopping." I just gave her a look and said, "HOW?" and she said, "You'll figure it out. This is real life. No chopping. You can do it." So I came up with this recipe for chicken. I bought a chicken that was already cut up, and all I really had to do was mix up some stuff and rub it on there and roast it. The honey lemon drizzle was a really great touch at the end but absolutely NOT mandatory. This goes deliciously with the Greek Salad. And then I realized that God has a sense of humor - prevent me from chopping, something that I love, and make me try harder to come up with things to cook. All I can do is really laugh.

Greek Roasted Chicken

A whole chicken, cut up (or bought cut up - 4-5 lb chicken)

2 tablespoons lemon juice
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon oregano
1 1/2 teaspoon salt

Honey Lemon Drizzle
1/2 cup honey
3 tablespoons lemon juice

Preheat oven to 500.

Mix lemon juice, olive oil, oregano, garlic powder, salt together in a large bowl. Add cut chicken. Rub and cover all pieces with the mixture. I prepared this earlier in the day and stuck it in the fridge, but the flavors are strong enough that you could do this right before cooking.

Place chicken into a deep roasting pan, keeping the chicken in a single layer.

Roast for 30 minutes. While chicken is roasting, mix together honey and lemon juice.

Watch chicken carefully the last 5 minutes. When the chicken skin starts looking golden, then quickly pour a bit of the honey drizzle over the chicken pieces. Cook for an additional 5 minutes until skin is blistered and slightly glossy.

Take out from oven. Allow to rest for 10 minutes. Serve with lemon wedges if desired.

Printable recipe

My favorite knife which I will not be using as much.

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