A mad woman in the kitchen … and some grandmotherly memories

 

And a few years later--Kegan, Jacob, Ford, and Morgan at Camp Tomball (my Tomball son's home)                                                                       

This popped  up on my computer today
Sawyer, Jacob, and Ford
Today they are seventeen and fifteen--unbelievable!

I am pretty much a by-the-recipe cook. Oh, sure, sometimes I take liberties with the recipe, adjust it this way and that, but I start with somebody else’s idea as a basic road map. Tonight, though, I flew on my own. (I think I’m mixing images there!).

We had a cut-up rotisserie chicken in the freezer, some egg noodles in the drawer, and a can of cream of chicken soup. Basic and easy. I told Jordan I’d make a chicken casserole, using the basic way I make tuna casserole. I assured her she’d eaten a lot of these as a youngster when I was trying to use up turkey left over from a holiday.

My method is pretty simple. I like egg noodles as the starch, but rice is just fine if you prefer that. Boil a cup of white wine (I used one of those airplane size bottles) with some dried herbs—a wild mix, if you want, of thyme, marjoram, oregano, summer savory, etc. Boil this a few minutes until the herbs turn black. Mix together diced meat—whatever you choose—some vegetables, a can of condensed cream of something soup, and the wine mixture.

Tonight I decided to get wildly creative, so I used a package of frozen, roasted Mexican-style corn Jean had brought me from Trader Joe’s. A digression here—I have found a daily cooking bulletin I really like, called Kitchn. I’m sure you can google it and sign up. They have cleaning hints, which I don’t much care about, but I like their recipes and product suggestions. They apparently have ties to Aldi, which they mention occasionally, and Trader Joe’s, which shows up much more often. So I kept a list of Trader Joe’s products I wanted, and one was this corn. I thought I could use half of it and keep the other half frozen, but not so—it had seasoning cubes and a cheese packet, so you were in for the whole thing. I now have half a packet of frozen corn in an icebox dish in the fridge. The other half went in the casserole.

Since the corn sort of set the tone, I only boiled oregano and black pepper in the wine. But I mixed diced chicken, corn, pre-cooked egg noodles, cream of chicken soup together and poured into a casserole dish. Topped with the cheese packet from the corn (cojita, I presume) and tortilla chips—much better suited than the Ritz crackers I had originally intended to use.

When Christian got here, he asked what was for supper, and I said, “An invented casserole.” But he and Jacob were persistent in wanting to know what was in it. Everybody liked it and had seconds. I also made a cucumber salad, with too much dressing—I saved the leftover dressing to put a fresh cucumber in tomorrow.

All in all, I’d declare my wild flight of fancy a success.