Roast a Chicken. Here's how.

A roast chicken dinner is festive, suitable for company,. and easy to do, in fact, foolproof.  Here is how.  First buy your chicken.  You get a choice between 4 pound fryers, and 6-8 pound roasters.  The fryers are tender and tasty.  The bigger roasters are mostly old laying hens that have stopped laying because of age.  They are chewy.  A fryer will serve six people, no sweat.  Used to be, both fryers and roasters came with giblets, now a days they are leaving out the giblets.  You want giblets to make gravy.  The plastic package will sometimes tell you if you are getting giblets or not.
  I stuff my chickens with ordinary supermarket stuffing mix, which is mostly bread crumbs.  I like to jazz the stuffing up with some chopped onion, some chopped celery, the chicken liver, some grapes in season or raisins out of season, some chopped apple.  Put some oil in a big frying pan and saute the chicken liver, and the onion.  Chop the chicken liver after you saute it.  Then press on and do the stuffing mix in the same pan.  The directions will call for bringing water and some oil to a boil and then adding the dry bread crumbs.  You might want to adjust the amount of oil to account for the oil you used to saute everything but that isn't critical.  Fill the chicken with the stuffing and then tie the chicken's legs together to keep the stuffing in.
   Roast in a 375 degree oven for 20 minutes to the pound.  The chickens all come with little plastic "bird watcher" thingies that pop open when they think the chicken is done.  Time is not critical, an extra 20 minutes won't hurt anything.  Baste the chicken with either the fat that cooks out of the bird or some olive or veggie oil.  Baste every 20 minutes or so.  Get a head start on basting by rubbing the chicken down with oil before putting him in the oven.  On the top of the stove, put the giblets into a pan, full of water, with some Bell's Poultry Seasoning.  Bring to a boil, back off the heat until you get to a low boil.  Let them cook until the chicken is done.
   When done, remove the chicken to a serving platter and let it rest while you make the gravy.  Add as much flour to the roasting pan as the grease will soak up.  Then add all the water from the giblet pan.  And perhaps some more,  you want about a quart of gravy.  Put the roasting pan on the stove top and set one or two burners to medium.  Then just stir until the gravy thickens.  While that is happening chop the giblets up fine and add them to the gravy.  With a couple of forks pick the meat off the neck and add it as well.  Season the gravy with some Bell's Poultry Seasoning and a little salt.  Taste and adjust.  Go easy on the salt. 
  You are done, call the guests to the table.  Don't forget the cranberry sauce. You can serve a green veggie and some rice to go with it.  Traditionally white wine is served with poultry, but you can do what ever suits your fancy.
   You can do turkey or Cornish game hens the same way as chicken.