taking chances

When I decided to become a world renowned chef learn how to cook I had no idea you could boil chicken.  To me you can bake, fry and grill chicken, I had never in my life heard of boiling chicken. Well there were like a million recipes out there that started with boiling the chicken and this scared me to death. I am already crazy hesitant about cooking chicken because I can never tell when it is done and am always scared I will undercook it and poison myself and friends - I think this is why I was so good at being a vegetarian! So last night I decided to step waaay out of my comfort zone and boil up some chicken!

It all started when I saw this recipe of Chicken Noodle Soup Casserole on my favorite Pioneer Woman and realized if I wanted more casserole options in my life I had to step out of my chicken boiling comfort zone. I researched what temperature and how long it should boil for and got about a million different answers, everywhere from 12 minutes to 22 minutes. So I stuck the chicken in the water with some olive oil, crossed my fingers and set my timer for 11 minutes to check on it. 

All I can say was that was the easiest chicken I have ever made!! Since our chicken was a bit thinner than normal chicken breasts it only took the 11 minutes and then it was perfect for shredding. Who knew chicken could be this easy?! 

I cooked the chicken earlier in the night since I was not sure how that situation was going to go. Once we were ready for dinner I started the water for the pasta and got to chopping up the celery, carrots and onion while mister pressed the garlic. Then we put it on a pan with some butter to start cooking all the veggies. 

Once that was done we just dumped in the cream of chicken and cream of mushroom soup followed by half a cup of sour cream and the boiled chicken ( no we did not almost forget to add the chicken, I don't know where you heard that)! 

We did not have room to mix everything in the pan so we actually put everything in a big bowl with the pasta. Once that was all mixed up we put it in a pyrex pan and stuck it in the oven for 20 minutes. 

Lastly heaven was created. Dumping an entire roll of crushed ritz crackers on top of this wonderful mix and cooking for another 5 minutes. This casserole was HEAVEN. Overall it was easy, there were quite a few steps but nothing was difficult once I stepped out of my comfort zone. 

 All I can say is I know exactly what I will be having for lunch today and probably dinner tonight!! 

On another note, I am dreaming of this dress and this dress. 

xoxo