chickens & pumpkins, oh my!

For the big day, I've been oven roasting chicken.

I've learned cooking the whole chicken is economical.  While it's a bit messy, it makes the house smell of home and kind of makes you feel like your meal is a pretty big deal, even when it ends up being this:

We've been making tons of chicken salad to put on lettuce and sandwiches.  Highly recommend it, yum.  We were inspired by Whole Food's Sonoma recipe but there's a lot of variations out there.

On another fall tangent, I've been adoring this clever solution to pumpkin carving:

So smart. I think I'm the last one on the block to go out and get me a pumpkin, so the project's inspired me in the right direction!