Rustic Chicken Casserole

From Me

chicken tenders (or breasts cut into strips)
6-8 small potatoes, peeled, sliced
carrots (equal to potatoes), peeled, sliced
1 onion, diced
2-3 stalks celery, diced
4 cloves garlic, chopped
5 oz mushrooms, sliced

Sauce

1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 cup sour cream
milk

Topping

stale croutons or stuffing mix (1 package), stale croutons work really well here.
mozzarella or provolone (unsmoked) cheese

Blanch potatoes and carrots in boiling water for just a few minutes. Drain. Place in 9x13 casserole. Saute onion, garlic, celery and mushrooms in olive oil. Pour onto potato and carrots.

Make sauce. If you don't typically use cream of mushroom soup, then substitute any creamy soup base you may use. Use milk to make a pourable consistency. Pour sauce over vegetables.

Lay chicken on top of casserole. Top with crushed croutons and slices of cheese.

Bake at 350 until chicken is done. (This is why strips work better than large chicken breasts. That and you don't need so much meat per serving this way.)

For those on blog feeds

I just tweaked the mushroom soup recipe. I added the original recipe amounts at the end and mucked with a bit in the middle. Enjoy!

Mushroom/Onion Soup

onion

garlic

mushrooms

Slice the onions (I used 1 HUGE onion), saute with olive oil and garlic (a few cloves). Make sure to cook the onions well. Too little sauteeing equals almost crunchy soup.

Chop mushrooms. I used baby portabello and white button. Pictured below isn't even half of what went in the pot. Probably a pound and a half total. I bought the mushrooms at Costco and they come in about 24 oz containers I think. Over half of each kind went in.

Add mushrooms to onion and garlic and cook until you just want to eat it all right now.

Now for the soup part. I use beef base. 4 tbs for 1 quartish of water (or there abouts). You can use beef bouillion or beef stock. The beef base stinks but ends up making everything taste great.

Let cook. If you use a crock pot, low 5-6 hours. On the stove top, maybe an hour. It does need some time to let all the flavors come together completely.

I have found having a good ciabatta bread sliced or diced in the freezer makes croutons and crisps dang easy. Top slices with provolone cheese. Pop in oven at 400 degrees and bake until cheese starts to bubble and brown.

This is an amazing soup. Hearty and with a very meaty, toothsome quality that I love. I didn't even miss chunks or slabs of meat. The mushrooms give a great texture. Hubby thinks it tastes like French Onion Soup with mushrooms. Sonny thinks it much better than French Onion Soup. I just love it.

(The recipe this came from is as follows: 2 tbl olive oil, 2 large vidalia onions chopped, 1 pack each-10 oz each- cremini and button mushrooms, salt and pepper, 2 tbl butter, 6-10 cloves garlic chopped, 2 tbl sherry, 4 c beef stock)

(original recipe from Crock-Pot Slow Cooker Recipes)

Gorilla Poops

Mom Fuhriman

Yep, you read that title right. This is a no bake peanut butter cookie. The hubby grew up calling it by this name because, well, that's kinda what they look like.

2 c sugar
1/2 c milk
1/3 c butter
1/2 tsp salt

Combine these and boil for 1 minute. Have ready the following in a large bowl...

3/4 c peanut butter
1 c coconut
3 c rolled oats
1 tbs vanilla

Pour the hot mix over bowl ingredients and stir well. Drop by teaspoonfuls on waxed paper lined plates or cookie sheets. Cool in fridge.

~notes~

After they cool, we store in the fridge in a tupperware bowl. They do tend to get crumbly. I don't like how sweet they come out but I can never convince hubby to lessen the sugar. If you try this with less sugar, please share how it turns out.