Cookin' it up!

I think the worst part of doing this whole grown up thing has to be cooking. Don't get me wrong, I like to cook. I love to cook, I love to bake. I'll try and cook anything once....as long as I can pronounce it, eat it, and doesn't have ten million ingredients. Because, despite the fact that I do like to cook, I am also cheap and lazy, therefore do not like to spend alot of time and energy gathering ingredients or putting it all together. I also like to think I watch what I eat, but most of the time it's just watching it all go into my mouth.

The crux of my cooking conundrum...(take that, high school english teacher)...is that I get very bored cooking the same things all of the time. I also have a very willing fiance who will try anything once and will lie to me if it's awful. So tonight, we try something new.

First off, I just want to let you know that this was all in my 'lil head. I did have some "inspiration" but I pretty much threw it all together...and I don't have pictures so just visualize. FI and I were in Walmart over the weekend and I happen to be thumbing through an issue of Taste of Home magazine...I love recipe magazines...mmm mmm. There was a recipe in the magazine for Pork noodle casserole.

Alright, casserole! I can totally do a casserole! But tonight, we have chicken noodle casserole.

Ingredients: 1lb. chicken tenderloins/breast, frozen mixed veggies, 1 can of cream of chicken soup, milk, colby and jack shredded cheese, half an onion, whole wheat rotini pasta, and crushed ritz cracker.

First, lets address the whole wheat pasta....tryin' to be healthy here, Matt talked me into at the store....idk what came over me. Also, I only had one can of cream of chicken soup on hand. If I had had another I would have used it, that why I added a bit of milk. Still, looking at it in the stove, it might be a bit dry. So, I definitely recommend 2 cans of the soup.

Boiled my pasta, the whole box of rotini...and I boiled my chicken. Yes, I said boil the chicken. I don't know when or why I started doing this, but whenever I have chicken in a casserole, stew, or soup I always boil it first. Chop it up and throw it in with the pasta after it's cooked and drained. Chop up the onion, throw it in the pot with the chicken and pasta. grab the bag of frozen veggies and throw it in the pot. Mix it up. I used two cups of the shredded cheese, it looked good. Throw it in the pot, mix it up! Same with the cream of chicken soup. Mix. It. Up. Clearly, I love to mix it up....or I like to move it, move it...again if you don't have the 2 cans of soup you could prolly do one can and about 1/2 cup of milk.

I'm not much of a measurer...er..er...er when I cook. I just throw the stuff in 'til it looks good.

So all the wet stuff is in the pot. Put it in a casserole dish. I used a 9x13 dish. Crushed ritz crackers go on top. I used one sleeve of the crackers, stuck em in a bag, crushed em up. mmm ritz crackers....

Oven on 350, pop your casserole into the oven for about 30 minutes and enjoy.....

P.S....As I write this, I have yet to eat any, so you are makin, bakin, and eatin at your own risk...