Food Friday's

So as I mentioned in yesterday's post, I've given up being lazy for lent. But not all kinds of lazy... because there is one particular form of lazy I'm very proud of. It's called "I don't feel like going to the store, so instead... I'll make it from scratch" lazy. Google is a MAJOR contributor to making this kind of lazy possible, and Google... yesterday? You ROCKED.

I had planned on making my old neighbor Summer's super easy Poppy Seed Chicken since I had some munchin variety family coming in for dinner after a long day of driving (it's great, cause you can make it ahead, and then finish it off in the oven after innumerable traffic delays).

There was only one problem. I didn't have any condensed cream of chicken soup. Whoops. SO, with chicken already boiling on the stove... I Googled "Cream of Chicken Soup" and found... THIS RECIPE! It's not JUST cream of chicken soup... it's CONDENSED cream of chicken soup! (thank you Tammie!) AND, it only took 10 minutes. AND, I had *almost* all the ingredients. I WAS missing poultry seasoning, but I Googled and found this, which I modified anyway. Needless to say, the soup was super easy to make, tasted good, has 0% fat (good, cause this dish originally had a bit of un-goodness in it) and was ready before the chicken was done. INCLUDING Googling time.

By now, you're probably thinking "ok Betsy, where's the recipe and/or pictures of this thing? remember? Picture-a-post at least? You promised." Ok, ok. This dish isn't very... attractive, Believe me, I've tried... but it IS yummy.

I made a few modifications this time. Obviously, the soup was from scratch, but I used 1 stick of margerine instead of the 1.5 sticks of butter (which I couldn't bear to use last time either). As for the soup, there were modifications there too... I halved it, since this is just about the only thing I use cream of chicken soup for... and you need a crowd for this recipe. So... my version WAS

3/4 cup water
1 boullion cube
light 1/4 tsp onion powder
light 1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/8 tsp seasoned salt
1/8 tsp parsley
1/8 tsp thyme
1/8 tsp majoram
Pinch of pepper
pinch of cloves
a couple cranks of the salt mill
3/4 cup milk (divided)
6 tbsp flour

all the goodness except 1/2 the milk and the flour went into a pot to boil, the remaining milk and flour were mixed together (wow was it thick!) some soup was added to temper, it was added BACK into the remaining soup, and mixed till thick (quickly). Then I strained it into the pan of chicken (cause I knew there were flour lumps), added another sprinkle of parsley, thyme, marjoram, garlic, onion & seasoned salt before mixing it all up with the chicken and topping with the crumb mixture.

Mmmmm Mmmmm good.  I might not make this with the CAN anymore!

-Betsy