Accidental Autumnal Chicken Sald

One of my family's favorite foods is homemade chicken salad.  When I don't have the time, I'll just use canned chicken.  But most of the time, I get pieces of chicken - preferable boneless, skinless thighs - and bake them in the oven.  After the chicken cools off, I cut it into chunks, add carrot, grapes or raisins, sometimes I'll cut up an apple, and then walnuts or pecans.  Toss with mayonnaise and vióla!  Homemade chicken salad!

Well, last week I decided I'd grate fresh carrots instead of cutting baby carrots up into chunks.  This was all fine and dandy, right until I added the mayonnaise.  Suddenly, the mayonnaise turned orange!  It took me a minute to figure out what was happening, but then I realized the grated carrot, which stained my hands orange, was now turning the entire chicken salad orange!

Without meaning to, I created autumnal chicken salad!

Emergency Dinner: Chicken and Rice

We all know what an emergency dinner is - you've gotten home from either work, shopping, or some other errand and it's dinner time.  Actually, dinner time passed you by 30 minutes ago, and now everyone (including you) is hungry and cranky.  You want to get food on the table as soon as possible, and you want to avoid hitting the local fast food restaurant again.

When our oldest son was seven, I worked in Denver and lived in Colorado Springs.  That meant I had a very long commute home, after which I needed to get dinner ready.  Let me tell you, cooking is definitely not one of the top 10 things I wanted to do after a commute.  So, I cooked extra on weekend and we ate leftovers at the beginning of the week.  Sometimes we ate pizza (he was seven, so we could not eat enough pizza for him).  But other nights, I'd whip up an emergency dinner.  No, it's not the healthiest dinner on the planet, but it beats fast food.

Tonight's Dinner:

Chicken and Rice

Ingredients:

• 2 c. of water
• 1 can (16 oz) of chicken, drained
• 1 can of cream of chicken soup
• 2 c of instant rice
• 1 c. of shredded sharp cheddar cheese (optional)

Directions:

1. Put water, chicken, and soup into a skillet.  Heat until the water boils.
2. Add the rice, mix well and cover.  Remove from heat and let sit for 5 minutes.
3. Spread the cheese on top of the mixture in the skillet and let sit another minute or until the cheese melts.

Voila!  Dinner is served.  I used the first five minutes of sitting time to set the table and finish the rest of dinner, and the last minute to call everyone to the table to eat.