What's for Dinner? Chicken Noodle Casserole

I'm not a food blogger, but I love food blogs. I really love to read about recipes and cooking. I'm especially impressed by food photography (Side note: Several weeks ago, I was working the shop and I brought along the "100" issue of Saveur magazine. The photography was was beautiful and so scrumptious looking that I felt like I could lick the pages and taste the dishes. Obviously, no such luck, but I did end up at Central Market right after my shift to buy ingredients to make Tomato Bread Salad with herbed roule. Yum!)

I'm a big fan of casseroles, a much maligned food category, in my opinion. When you're in a rush and you're trying to think of something delicious and satisfying to feed your family, a casserole always seems to hit the spot. I sometimes imagine that if the Midwest had an official regional food, it would be The Casserole. Being a lover of chicken noodle soup, but wanting something more substantial, I decided to improvise and create the Chicken Noodle Casserole. (Recipe below.)

Queen Sassy Pant's More Than Delicious Chicken Noodle Casserole

Ingredients:

1 Rotisserie chicken, meat pulled from bone and cubed (or if you prefer, about a pound of chicken breast, cooked and cubed)
1 cup frozen peas, thawed
1 cup diced carrots
1 cup diced celery
1 cup diced white or yellow (non-sweet) onion
1 pound linguini, broken in half, cooked just shy of al dente (any short pasta will suffice, really)
1.5 cups of milk (I used 2%. If you want a saucier casserole, you may need as much as 2 cups)
1 can of Cream of Chicken soup, though Cream of Celery or Cream of Mushroom would be just as delicious
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese, divided

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 375. Spray a casserole dish (in this case, a 5-qt Le Creuset French oven) with non-stick spray and add noddles. Set aside.

2. In a skillet or non-stick pan, over medium-low heat, sweat the vegetables until soft. You don't want them to brown, but rather slowly release their flavor. This takes about 10-12 minutes.

3. In a medium sized sauce pan, combine milk, soup, and 2 T of Parmesan. Allow to thicken slightly.

4. Combined chicken, skillet vegetables, peas, and sauce. Pour over noodles in the casserole dish and carefully stir to incorporate. Top with remaining Parmesan cheese.

5. Bake at 375 for about 40 minutes or until bubbly. For a brown top, pop under the broiler for about 10 minutes. Enjoy!

Insomnia and Recovery

On Friday, I got to ditch that nasty ol' gallbladder and since then have been having a bugger of a time sleeping. I think the real trouble is that I sleep so much during the day that I'm awake at night and can't quite get back on track.

There are some considerable holes in my blog right now. Between my trip to the ER last week and then the eviction of my icky gallbladder...well, there isn't much to tell. I'm hoping to start a short series soon on living simply. It's a recession; people are downsizing. I thought I'd put my two cents out there on how I'm going to do my part in being the family-finance manager. Stay tuned.

Now if only I could get some shut-eye...

What a week!

Well, the last couple of weeks have been pretty nutty around here. Mostly in a good way (at least until Thursday, when a certain bodily organ who shall remain nameless decided to be a total butthole! But more on that in a minute.)

So quick re-cap:

1. I finished up Cake Decorating 101 and totally loved it! My final cake was just delightful and so pretty. I didn't quite master the Wilton Rose technique, but I think with practice and the right icing, I should be cranking out a thousand in now time! (Oh who am I kidding?! They make bakeries for those kinds of things, don't they?)

2. Though I finished up Cake Decorating class with flying colors, I missed Week 3 so I could attend an informational session of a very well know and somewhat misunderstood woman's volunteer organization. I found out they are much more than just white glove tea parties and cotillions! Being someone who can't say no, of course I signed on the dotted line. So that's now two highly involved organizations that demand oodles of time that I'm adding to the activities list. I'm really excited!

3. I had a job interview, was offered the position, and then turned it down all in one day. I know, I know... in this economy with so many people out of work, what kind of idiot turns down a job? The kind that would have been miserable doing the work. It was totally up my skill set alley, but I'm discovering there is a lot more to working than just getting a pay check. I want to enjoy my work and feel like I'm doing something worthwhile, and for me, this job just wasn't it.

4. And finally, my gall bladder is a total butt hole. Okay, not literary (ehhh...now I've got a mental image going on here. Give me a sec...) On Thursday, after a very delicious but small bowl of mac 'n cheese, I ended up doubled over in the most horrible pain of my life. And I've had a baby! Gone through 5 IV starts, 2 epidurals, 1 c-section (and a partridge in a pear tree!) This pain was more horrible than that times 1000. I was lucky that King Sassy Pants was working from home that day and was able to cart me to the ER (with Prince Sassy in tow). One dose of Zofran, a shot of morphine, and an ultrasound later --- well, let's just say in my gall bladder are what look like Cadbury chocolate mini eggs (Ha! Bet you're not going to eat any of those this Easter!) So, the gall bladder is taking a hike next Friday. Ahhh, yes, outpatient surgery. It's exactly how I love spending Valentine's weekend.

So that's the wrap up so far. I'm just hunkering down for the next week, on my low/no-fat diet so as not to anger the evil Gall. Why is everything that is so delicious also about the most fattening thing on earth!?

Craftacular: Ribbon Tag Blankies

Seems like I'm a roll with finding household appliances that have been safely forgotten about and then digging them out and going on a home ec bender. Not long ago, I dug out my old sewing machine. My mom, a very talented seamstress, gave me the machine when I moved into my first apartment (oh, about a million years ago!) I managed to make one set of hideous curtains and then my sewing machine found its way into a craft-esque oubliette.

After staring at the machine and reading the 17 page manual for the zillionth time (I was really hung up about winding a bobbin. Traumatic bobbin incident back in '02), I thought it was about time to get this party started.

I have a almost 4-month old niece (Claire) and a 6-month old nephew (Henry). For Hanukkah, I gave each of them one of these Taggie brand Take-a-Long toys. They were such a hit, I told my sister-in-law, that I'd be happy to make a blankie version for Claire Bear. Well, I can't just make one for her and not for Henry, so last night I whipped out these cuties in no time. Easy, inexpensive (material for 4 of these blankies costs about $13. ONE store bought Taggie is $20.00. Yikes!)

They're folded just for easy of photo taking, but the blue one (for Henry) is about 15" x 17" and the green one (for Claire) is 18" x 18".

Fancy Mac 'n Cheese

Oops! It's been a whole week without a post. I guess that's what happens when you rocket off into a huge start. It's easy to come up short some weeks.

No worries, I'm back and tonight I'm cooking up Pioneer Woman's Fancy Macaroni. There is zero anything diet about it. I figure pairing it with a nice spinach and strawberry salad would help cancel out some of the zillion calories caused be the THREE cheeses...and bacon...and butter. Eek!

Last week was kind of busy for me with some really neat opportunities ahead. I'll be sure to post about them later this week as developments evolve.

A+ Homework!

Last night, I finished my first Class Cake. Besides the Electric Lemon yellow base icing, I have to give myself a pat on the back. It's not a bad cake, eh? The text says "Happy Birthday 2 Me!" since tomorrow is my birthday and I can't let good cake go to waste.

Wilton Class, Level 1, Session 2

Okay, so at Cake Decorating School, students have homework. You have to bring a cake (or if you don't want to bring a cake, you can buy a cake, use a styrofoam dummy cake, or the back of a cake pan covered with wax paper. However, I think all of these options are cheating and kind of missing the whole fun of being in a cake decorating class: you get to eat cake!) that's been iced.



Just for a second, please disregard the blinding shade of "Big Bird" yellow and focus on the lovely smoothness of the buttercream. Buttercream icing is actually tricky to smooth just using an icing spreader. It tends to go on like spackle and can look a lot like a poorly textured bathroom wall instead of a yummy, pretty cake. There is a trick to getting the texture of the icing smooth and pretty and it involves using a paper towel. Once the icing has formed a crust (when touched lightly the icing won't pull away from the cake and end up on your finger), you lay a non-textured paper towel (like Viva) over the cake and gentle rub the surface with a light touch. Or you can use a fondant smoother. However, I don't have one of these gadgets, so I had to improvise.


Yep, that is a jar of hair styling product that I used just this morning. However, it has a very smooth lid and when used in the whole smoothing-the-buttercream paper towel trick, well, it's quite handy. I think Alton Brown would be quite pleased that I didn't purchase a fondant smoother, being that it is a unitasker and all. So now my homework is ready to decorate, complete with a fancy white icing star border to hide the crap that covers the cardboard round. I'll post tomorrow with the results of Lesson 2: Decorating a Cake With So Much Icing That Just Looking at it Will Send You Into a Diabetic Coma.