Last night's dinner:<br />Roast chicken<br />Creamy polenta with mushrooms<br />Steamed broccoli<br />Tuscan Moon sangiovese ($5 at Trader Joe's and worth every penny!)<br /><br />It's so easy to roast a chicken, every time I do it I wonder why we don't do it more often. Rinse a smallish (~4-5 lb.) chicken and pat dry. Sprinkle generously with salt. Put in some sort of pan, breast side up -- for this, I use a sturdy sheet pan. Brush the breast and legs with a couple of tablespoons of melted butter. I stuck a lemon in the bird's nether cavity for a little lemony flavor, since my parents just visited and brought a load of lemons from their sunny southern home.<br /><br />Roast at 400 degrees for about an hour until the meat thermometer reads 170-180 degrees F, depending on how tender you want it. If you use a shallow pan, the skin gets nice and browned and crispy.<br /><br />The polenta was also super simple. I pureed one of those solid polenta logs in the  food processor with a cup of milk to make it creamy. Sauteed a packace of sliced mushrooms. Mixed them together and heated for a few minutes on the stove.<br /><br />Active time for this meal was less than 20 minutes. However, every time I roast a chicken I am reminded after dinner why I don't do it more often: we don't have a dishwasher. Cleaning up the roasted-on skin and fat and goop from the cooking pans takes a while.<br /><br />But it's sooooo good! Even when your olfactory senses are about 75% impaired by The Cold That Won't Go Away.