chicken and guacamole tostadas

From cooking light magazine.  Here's the recipe:

I went to buy a rotisserie chicken from Safeway but I couldn't do it.....added preservatives, coloring, weird flavorings, etc.  So, I bought a chicken and roasted it myself.  It's so easy, but you do need a couple of hours at home while it cooks.  Place the chicken in a large pan, salt and pepper the skin and place in the oven at 375 degrees for 1-2 hours.  I had a 5lb. chicken that was partially frozen, so it took the full 2 hours.  If you have a meat thermometer you can check the chicken's temperature according to online instructions, or you can cut it open in the deepest part of the chicken to make sure there are no more bloody spots and the chicken has been cooked all the way through.

There will be some oils and juices in the bottom of the pan.  Get a spoon and redisperse juices over chicken.  Let stand 10-15 minutes for juices inside chicken to redistribute and for the chicken to cool a bit.  Transfer to a cutting board and start pulling off pieces of chicken and shredding.  There's really no correct method to doing this.  Just get rid of bones, innards, and skin and pull off all the meat.  Sorry this picture may be gross, but see how I got all of the meat off of the carcass?

A 5lb. chicken gave me about 4 cups of shredded meat, some for tostadas and rest for white chicken chili (pics/comments coming soon, recipe from Neelys http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/patrick-and-gina-neely/white-chicken-chili-recipe/index.html).

 Next, follow the recipe as shown above.

Here's the final product with some boiled asparagus on the side.  They were tasty!  I fried some all-natural corn tortillas from Trader Joe's for the tostada shells.  Just place 1-2 tbsp. oil in a pan and brown tortillas ~3min. on each side or until crispy.  You can probably only do 2-3 tortillas at a time.



Fruit salad (whatever fruit you have on hand, shown here is bananas, apples, oranges, and cantelope) was a cool, sweet finish to this meal.  One trick I have with fruit salad is to always pair a citrus (orange slices or lemon juice) with apples and bananas so that they do not brown.  Slice up the oranges first so that some of the juice remains on the cutting board and will meet your bananas and apples when sliced.  Or, you can slice bananas or apples and squeeze some lemon juice over them and then toss them in a fruit salad.