• 1 whole chicken - Because it's more important than ever to pay attention to things like food miles, I try to choose locally raised, free range chicken from one of the growing number of organic farms in my area. I know this isn't possible for everyone, but if you can swing a couple of extra dollars you'll be saving a whole lot more in terms of carbon emissions and oil/gas consumption -- and you'll be supporting local families and your local economy. Just something to think about.
• 1-2 whole fresh lemons, halved
• a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil
• sea salt
• ground paprika
• rosemary
• garlic powder
• (or you can use Alchemy Spice's Easygoin' Seasoned Salt or another chicken rub blend)
• 1 roasting pan

1. Pre-heat your oven to 400F.
2. While the oven is heating up, take a small bowl and blend 2 tablespoons of paprika with a tablespoon of garlic powder and one of rosemary, plus a good pinch of salt. Skip this step if you're using a blend like I do (and if you do decide to jump on the roast chicken wagon, you'll probably want to find a favorite blend - it will save you a good 5 minutes).
3. Remove the bag of "innards" and other jiggly bits from inside the cavity of the chicken. I tend to dispose of these - though if you have a special recipe for them, go for it by all means!
4. Place the chicken 'backbone up' on the roasting pan, then stick the lemon halves inside the chicken cavity. I usually end up using about 3 halves though if the chicken is larger (or smaller) you may use all 4 halves or only 2. (Note: If you do have an extra lemon half left, you can always rub the cut-end over the outside of the chicken and squeeze a little of the juice over the skin (stick in in the microwave for about 30 seconds before you do this and you'll find you get about 10 times more juice out of it)).
5. Use a small length of chicken string to tie the two drumstick ends together to 'close' the cavity and keep the lemons in.  
6. Drizzle a little bit of olive oil (to taste) over the chicken, then pour some of the spice rub mix into your hand and rub it all over the chicken. If you've got any sort of repulsion to touching a naked chicken, this is where you'll just have to get over it - or else abort mission, speed-dial the chinese takeaway and  try again tomorrow.
7. Once you've rubbed the olive oil and spice mix well into the chicken (make sure you get as many nooks and crannies as you can!), place the chicken on a middle shelf in the oven.
8. Leave it on 400 for about 45 minutes to really get the skin to crisp up, then turn the oven down to 375 for another 45 minutes to an hour.
9. If you have a meat thermometer, use that as your guide. If not, look for the chicken to take on a beautiful, golden brown - the color of summer barley - and for the juices to run totally clear when you prick it with a knife (no cloudiness).
10. Remove the chicken from the oven and let it "rest" for a good 10 or 15 minutes covered loosely in a tent of aluminium foil.

Ever since I first flipped through my latest read,  Heidi Swanson's Super Natural Cooking, these banana muffins caught my eye. They're actually a variation on the Espresso Banana Muffins featured in the book, since I'm cutting out most caffeine and didn't want to include the espresso (though I might take up her suggestion of stirring some chocolate chunks into the next batch). Anyway, this makes a good baker's dozen, so I had enough to share with friends, too! 

These muffins were also a golden opportunity to take my new stainless steel KitchenAid Artisan 5qt Stand Mixer for a whirl...talk about a new favorite kitchen gadget - I can't keep my hands off it!  One caveat though. If you're used to light, cake-y sugary muffins, these are not for you. These are all about the banana and they're lighter on the sugar and denser than their store-bought or package-mix counterparts (which means they're actually filling, too - perfect for a working girl's breakfast on the go).

• 2 cups white whole wheat flour
• 2 tsps baking powder (Swanson recommends aluminium-free)
• 1/2 tsp fine-grain sea salt
• 1 cup chopped toasted walnuts (this is where I depart from Swanson's recipe)
• 6 tbsps unsalted butter at room temperature
• 3/4 cup Florida Crystals (natural cane sugar) 
• 2 large eggs
• 2 tsps vanilla extract
• 1 cup plain yogurt (I actually used Stonyfield Farms Organic Vanilla yogurt)
• 1 1/2 cups mashed over-ripe bananas (since the only bananas available in Greenlife Grocery were small little organic ones, I used six small-medium sized bananas)
• unbleached paper baking cups
• muffin tray (12-cup)

I saw this little story on the Today Show Tuesday and thought it was worth finding and highlighting here. Annie Bell Muzaurieta of The Daily Green shared five super-easy ways to "green" your diet -- and they're all beautifully simple:

1. Buy organic as much as you can. For most intelligent cooks - and eaters - these days that's pretty much a given. Or at least I hope it is. After all, it's one of the most responsible things you can do for our food supply, our health and our planet...If the wallet doesn't stretch to all organic, however, Muzaurieta provides some guidelines to help make the right choices.

2. Eat local. As Muzaurieta reminds us, the average food travels 1,500 miles (yes, one thousand five hundred) just to get to your kitchen...and to your plate...put it in those terms (and then think about the price of gas today...almost $4 a gallon around here) and two things become immediately clear - one, the sheer waste of energy that comes with buying an apple produced on the other side of the country (or world) versus buying one grown a few miles from your own doorstep and b) the reason food prices are steadily increasing along with gas prices...

3. Go Brown. Add in whole grains like brown rice (see last week's brown rice salad frenzy!), wheat, barley...check out my new fave cookbook, Super Natural Cooking for a few great ideas to get started.

 4. Opt for an organic wine. This is a fast-growing area of green food - and Muzaurieta does a nice job of explaining that  organic wine is produced from grapes grown without synthetic pesticides (and that some wines can't be labeled organic even though they're produced with organic grapes because the producer adds sulfites to it).

5. BYOB - that's bring your own bag. I've got a nice - and growing - collection of great shopping totes, but still, who knew paper could be just as negative as plastic?