Easy Pasta Carbonara and Roasted Chicken

I've never had Pasta Carbonara so I was looking forward to trying this Sweet As Pie Cooking Club selection from the Pampered Chef Easy Pasta Carbonara.    We had it along with what I should call "Don't try this at home" Roasted Chicken.

Starting with the chicken, I got one of the "free" chickens.  No additives, no antibiotics, no hormones, no, no, no, etc.  It was a pricey chicken, but it was going to be healthy and hopefully actually taste like chicken.  Just add simple seasonings in a roasting pan and it should be done in 1 hour according to the recipe.

At a blazing 500 degrees.  Sounds good so far.

Right.

Now that the chicken is in the oven, I got the pasta going.  We can't seem to convert to the "other" bacon, so I used regular bacon.  This dish was starting to remind me of Hamburger or Chicken Helper, put it all in the pot and let it cook down.  Easy enough.

A few minutes into all this, smoke began coming from the oven.  Oh ok, one of the comments on the roasted chicken recipe said something about smoke but I wasn't worried about it.  But it didn't stop!  The chicken continued to spit and sputter all inside the oven.  Smoke everywhere!

The smoke detector went off and the chicken wasn't even close to being done.  After 1 hour it looked like this.  From all that smoke you would think this thing was burned to the bone!

I made a cut into the leg and it wasn't even close to done.  So I put it back in the oven just to let it "smoke" some more!    I turned on the vent fan which didn't help at all and opened the door to let some fresh air in.  My throat and nose were burning from breathing all that smoke, ugh.

I have NEVER fanned the smoke detector like this, it was so frustrating!

 Now back to the pasta, it's done and ready for the next step.  Add in the yummy cheeses....parmesan

and yes cream cheese too!

Finally, I took the chicken out of the oven, I don't know how long it was in there.  Maybe an hour and half?  It was very moist and I should have checked the temp to see if it was done but I didn't.  I cut off what I thought was done and left what I wasn't sure about.  I had a meeting to go to and just wanted to eat dinner and go at this point!

The Bassman was a bigger fan of the Pasta Carbonara than I was.  He had 3 servings for dinner and took leftovers for lunch the next day.  I thought it was a little bland, but it could be that my sinuses and taste buds were so irritated from the smoke that I couldn't taste it!  I'm glad I used real bacon and added extra red pepper flakes.

And I will never roast a chicken like that again!