Dinner How-To's for Lazy Mommies - Easy Chicken Bake

So I have an awesome recipe for Easy Chicken Bake that I modified from one my Grandma served one night.

You might wonder why I modified the recipe if grandma's was so good.  Well, my grandma is a wonderful hostess and cook, as a matter of fact, I don't think I've ever had a bad meal at her house.  And she always thinks of the whole meal, not just the main course (for example, my grandma thinks of dessert *before* guests arrive) AND everything is served hot, not warm from setting out on the counter for 20 minutes while the buns bake.  Basically, she figures out the big picture and then makes it happen.

I think about dinner while on my way home from work.  I've been getting better and trying to plan ahead, but some days I'm way too tired so we end up with something thrown together.

So I modified grandma's recipe... and cut it down to 4 ingredients.  Chicken breast, a can of Cream of Celery soup, a box of Stovetop, and some water to mush it all together.  (It tastes better than it sounds here.)

If you want to try it...

Cut up the chicken into pieces, however big you want, and dump them into a baking pan/dish.
Dump the Stovetop onto the chicken pieces.
Dump the soup onto the chicken pieces and the Stovetop stuffing.
Now mix it up with a soup can of water.

Bake it in the over till it's cooked through.  I usually worry about germs so ours might go in for an hour at 350 to start, but I'll check it and put it in longer just to be sure.

This is a hit!  Everyone (including John) likes this one.

And it fits my criteria:  I can put it together in about 10 minutes with one kid wrapped around my leg and the other kid interrupting my train of thought with a question a second.

And by luck (or poor planning... whatever) I realized there's an EASIER way to do this meal.

I know.  Shocking, right?

But true.  And all you need is cream of celery soup, a can of chicken, a can of biscuits, and water.

Get the biscuits into the oven to bake first.  Then, mix the can of cream of celery soup and most of the can of chicken (I wasn't sure it was going to work the first time I did it and that was our last can of chicken so I was leaving my options open by setting some aside, the second and third time I made this, I set some aside to add to the finished dish because it improved on the appearance) into a bowl.  Next, add enough water so it's more creamy, less "soupy", and microwave till hot.  To serve, open a biscuit and pour the soup over it.  And if you want to get really fancy, add a slice of jellied cranberries on top.
 
Now, it's not as good as the original Easy Chicken Bake but everyone liked it so it's been added to our emergency meal list.

Katie's Making FRIENDS!

I picked Katie up from school on Thursday and found her outside playing with a little boy named Ben.

On Tuesday afternoon pickup, when we were washing up in the sink before heading home, a little girl named Nora followed us over and stood nearby while Katie washed her hands.

I tried to play it cool... I didn't squeel or oooh or ahhh over these kids or anything lame like that, but I will admit that inside I was doing a little dance. 

My Katie has friends!

Not that she hasn't friends before (she's got an adorably sweet cousin and a boy friend we set up play dates with every so often)... but it seemed like she talked about her invisible friends more than her *real* friends.  So this was so exciting for her mommy to see.

She's still doing well in school and every morning at drop off we have our goodbye routine.  (There's no "mixin' it up" when it comes to the goodbye routine.  Just ask Katie.)  The goodbye routine goes like this: I walk down the stairs to the cafeteria and wait on the landing (if I'm off by a step, she tells me so that I can fix it).  Katie gets to the bottom step and I give her a huge hug.  By then, her teacher is there to greet her and off she goes, without a backward glance.

I'm really happy that she starts her school day so happily.  It would be terrible if she started to get upset because I was leaving her for the day... and she would miss me so horribly while I was gone... and nothing at her school, no friends, no fun, would help her to ease the pain of not having me near her.  Yep.  That would be terrible.  So it's good that she doesn't miss me at all and doesn't even say "good bye" when she walks away with her teacher. 

Yep, it's good that she couldn't care less that her mommy cries a silent tear every morning loves school so much that I don't have to worry about leaving her.

She's probably too busy thinking of her fun-filled, action-packed day ahead. 

There have been a lot of fun-filled, action-packed days over the past month and a half.  She's gone to a cave (and panned for gems), the theater, the Falls, Underwater Adventures, a wave pool, and played in a "wet n wild" park event with fire hoses and pools.  She's learning about gardening and taking a dance class (and next month she starts her class learning about dogs).  She's made new friends (!!!).  Whew.  I'm exhausted just thinking about it!

And we were going to get her from school early tomorrow so we could make a family trip to the Farmer's Market (Thursday) but decided that since we didn't have the strollers (grandma and grandpa brought them to the lake in anticipation of our fun weekend... which we didn't have) and we're all getting over some icky sickness, we would go next week. 

Maybe that will give me time to look for a kid leash for Jacob.

Bad Storms

I took Katie to Target tonight to buy her lunch bag for school (I've got to pack her lunch starting Tuesday unless we want to pay $3.25 PER DAY (!!!!) to buy her lunch, which I so don't want to do... pay that is.) and after we found the perfect bag and picked out a cute ladybug ice pack, we spent a lot of time in the shoe section trying on heels (or tall shoes as Katie calls them).

We also had to buy band-aids.  Katie had a pack of 10 and somehow 6 of them managed to become attached to her arms and legs.  Now 4 of the 6 are attached to the floor and couch.  Surprisingly, there were no visible injuries after the removal of the band-aids.  So anyway, now she's got Dora band-aids and there are 26 in that pack and if I hide it really well, maybe we won't run out in the next 2 days.

And on the way out of the Target parking lot, Katie said "Mommy, I really miss Target" with a wistful tone.  All I could think was that I do too...

Then I heard the *tornado* sirens.  And we kind of hurried home because *tornado* sirens aren't a good thing.

I saw a bunch of people on the street watching the storm and staring at the sky in the area right near our house and as I got closer, the lightening got worse.  Then it was drizzling but nothing too bad, just not great.

We got home and into the house and John didn't think the storm was serious enough for us to go downstairs (big relief since Jake was sleeping) so I was putting clothes away in the bedroom when he told me that we should go down.  Like NOW.

So I took the kids, the diaper stuff, and my phone (you know, the important stuff...) and we headed downstairs.

By the time we got settled and turned on the news Katie was getting worried.  She was nervous about the "bad storm" going on and she kept asking if her toys would be okay upstairs and if our house would be okay upstairs.  It was pretty much the topic for the 40 minutes we were down there.  I read a book, stopped Jake from getting into the TV hutch, reassured Katie, stopped Jake from standing on one of the chairs, reassured Katie, asked John to bring down Lambie... and Big Bear (the only huge, child-sized bear we have and Katie worriedly asks "Do you think daddy knows who big bear is?"), cuddled Katie, folded a load of towels, changed Jake's diaper, reassured Katie, called Grandma and Grandpa to say hi, and finally, packed everything back up to bring upstairs once John gave the all clear.

Katie was still worried and she insisted we watch the news.  I tried to change the channel but she kept asking "Where is the news?" so I didn't try again till the storm had really calmed down.  That meant she heard the words "tornado, hail, trees down, tornado, tornado, tornado!" and I didn't think she understood all of this stuff but I think the weatherman repeating everything 500 times might have helped the phrases stick.  She didn't want me to change the channel downstairs either.

Now she's sitting next to me because she's scared to go to bed by herself.  Tonight I'll give her a break.  I've been making her go to bed at 8:30 or so but tonight she's had a bit of a scare and it's nice to sit here snuggled up with her.

She just said "I love you mama."  Awww.

Now she's asked "Can I lean on you?" and I said of "Of course" (because she's not really into cuddling with mommy much anymore, she's too busy keeping toys away from Jacob).

I'm really surprised she didn't also ask me for a popsicle.  She's been loving those today and has eaten many more than one kid should eat.  But her throat is sore and it makes her feel better so I've been letting it go.

Now the kids are in bed and I'm getting sleepy.  We've had a busy evening and it's hopefully going to be much MUCH calmer tomorrow!