Get away from me you hippie freaks.

First stop on this crazy train to Paleotown is, of course, the organic natural food store. I found one in my neighborhood which is great because I'm lazy and would definitely not drive 30 minutes to a Whole Foods to get "good" food. It's called Valley Natural Foods and is about 500 feet away from the vet I take my rabbits to.

Yes. I own rabbits. Three of them. They are cute, cuddly, and fuzzy and they don't really do much. Everybody at the gym already knows and have given me unending amounts of shit for it. THIS IS NOT NEWS.

Here's the food store's website - www.valleynaturalfoods.com.

I'm pretty sure that I had the only car in the parking lot without their radio set to NPR. I was also the only one not wearing some sort of flannel.

Let me be clear here. About a year ago I watched Food, Inc. I know about factory farming and the horrible conditions chickens and cows and pigs are subjected to before Tyson or Hormel or whoever slaughters them and puts them on a little shrink-wrapped styrofoam tray. Now, you'd think being a small fuzzy animal owner my heart would break for these poor piggies and cowies and chickenies. Nah, not really. I don't care. What did bother me was what they were feeding the animals and, in essence, what I was feeding myself. So I went off on an organic meat kick for a little while. That shit's expensive when you buy it at a regular grocery store. After a few weeks of paying really outrageous prices for supermarket "Organic" meats and stuff, I eventually went back to the factory farmed meat. I did notice that the flavor of the organic stuff was markedly better, but $22 for a 4.5 pound SmartChicken?

I went into Valley Natural before while I was on this organic kick, but I'd already meated up elsewhere. I was just curious what was in there and since I had to take one of my bunnies to the vet to get fixed (it's an overnight dropoff in case you're curious) I just drove over. I bought a head of Certified Organic Lettuce. It looked really good. Brought it home, started taking the leaves off over the sink so I could wash it and eat it. Out from between two of the leaves crawls something giant, black, and buglike. This naturally scares the fuck out of me so I panic, shove the whole remainder of the lettuce, Hellbeetle and all, into the garbage disposal and I reduce it to paste.

That experience kind of put me off of Co-ops in general.

I didn't get jumped by a Hellbeetle this time. I found that the produce department, while not vast like Cub's, had pretty much everything. I picked up some zucchini, butternut squash, onions, garlic, lemons, carrots, and almonds. Everything there was natural/organic, and not too terribly pricey. The meat department was even better. I found a 5.5 pound natural/organic chicken - a giant roasting chicken - for $10.50. I found a great grass-fed beef chuck roast for $11 - I think it's 3.5 pounds. I made the chicken last night so I'd have lunch for today. And dinner. I suppose I'll have to make the chuck roast tonight so I have food for Wednesday.

I'll probably be doing a lot of shopping at Valley Natural. Most of my meal choices have basically been Whole30/9 compliant anyway. For example - here's the recipe for the chicken I made. The veggies that are natural seem to be a little smaller in size so I included approximate sizes.

Kevin's Citrus-Roasted Chicken

You will need:
Olive oil, sea salt, fresh cracked pepper.
1 - Naturally Organic Certified Chicken (4-5 pounds)
2 - zucchini
2 - yellow squash, could be butternut if you can find it
3 - lemons about the size of racquetballs (I was going to say lacrosse balls but seriously, who plays that game besides prep-school douches?)
3 - carrots
3 - yellow onions about the size of your fist
6 - cloves of garlic
Some sage leaves, some rosemary sprigs. I made a small herb planter garden on my deck this summer and that shit has PAID OFF.

First, go out and buy this roasting pan - http://www.amazon.com/Calphalon-Classic-Anodized-16-Inch-Nonstick/dp/B0009W7EC6.

After that, preheat your gas oven to 375. If you don't have a gas oven, I weep for you. Your house sucks.

Take the chicken out of the packaging and rinse it off in the sink, then pat it dry with paper towels. If your chicken came with a giblet pack it'll be stuffed inside the neck. Remove that and throw it away. I entertained ideas about pan frying them up and eating them with eggs for a breakfast skillet type meal, but really, I know I'm not going to use them.

Put the chicken on the rack, breast side down. If you can't tell which side the breast is on put your hand in the cavity like it was a hand puppet. Make the chicken do a dance. Can you tell which way the head would be facing if the chicken was whole? The way the imaginary chicken head is facing while you're making it dance is the breast side. Put it on the rack that side down.

Now take about a teaspoon of olive oil (you don't have to measure) and pour it on the back of the bird. Rub it all over. This will make you feel kind of dirty for no apparent reason. Rinse your hands off and grab the sea salt. Sprinkle about a tablespoon of salt all over the back of the bird. Grab your pepper mill and grind around a tablespoon of pepper all over the back of the bird.

Flip the chicken over so the breast is up, and repeat the process - oil, salt, pepper. You're going to leave the chicken to roast breast side up the whole time, so make sure you get it right. I am serious about the dancing thing. Teeth-clenchingly serious. I have ruined chickens by accidentally roasting them breast side down before - they don't turn out at all.

I'm going to assume you're familiar with washing veggies before preparing them so I won't go into detail about it. Wash your veggies and herbs. Good, everything's clean now. You can even do this ahead of time. Along with the chopping and preparing. The French call it "Mise En Place" and I call it "Great, now I have 7 different small bowls to wash in addition to everything else so fuck that."

Cut two of your lemons in half. Take one of the halves and put it in the cavity of the chicken. I like to put the cut side facing the neck, but I have no evidence this affects flavor. Take half of the rosemary you have and half of the sage you have, put those in the cavity of the chicken. Take three of your garlic cloves, peel them if you haven't already, and put those in the cavity of the chicken. Put in two more lemon halves. The cavity should be pretty damn full. Good job.

Put the chicken in the oven and set a timer for 20 minutes.

You should have enough time to put the rest of this together in 20 minutes. Especially since everything's washed already. If it isn't, you really do cook like I do. Halve the zucchini (also, get rid of the stem and bottom part) and then cut those pieces into about 1/2" segments. Do the same for the squash. Chop the onions into largish quarters and separate each of the onion layers. Take off the tops and bottoms of the carrots and cut those into 2" segments. Don't bother to peel the carrots.

Put all those pieces in a big mixing bowl.

Next - the mixture I use on pretty much everything. I don't have a name for it, I just made it up.

Put a quarter cup of olive oil in a small bowl. Then, add about a tablespoon of sea salt. Add a teaspoon of fresh cracked pepper. Chop rosemary and sage into pieces, add them. Take your remaining three cloves of garlic and mince them up and add them to the bowl. Stir the mixture up until the salt's pretty much dissolved.

Dump the entire concoction into the mixing bowl with the veggies. Mix the whole thing up with your hands until everything's coated. Really get in there. Your 20 minutes are probably up right now. Rinse your hands off and pull the pan out. Pour the vegetables around the chicken if you're using a traditional roaster pan. If you did like I said and bought the Awesome Roaster, pull the rack out and pour the vegetables in the bottom of the pan, then replace the rack. Oh yeah. You know those three lemon halves you still have left? Put those in the bottom of the pan too. Spread them out.

Put it back in the oven. Set your timer for 35 minutes. Take out the chicken and stir the vegetables up some, moosh the lemons a bit so their juices flow out. Set your timer for 35 more minutes and put everything back in the oven.

After the timer finishes its countdown to a flavor explosion, pull the chicken out and cut into the breast meat. The juices should run clear and the meat should be white, perhaps a slight pinkish hue to it. If you can still see some colored juices running, put it back in the oven for 10 - 15 minutes. Larger birds will need extra time.

You should now have probably the tastiest chicken in the history of the universe. If you don't, you did something wrong. Go back and find what it was and don't do that the next time. I'm betting it was the roasting pan.