My Crazy Chicken Spinach Potato Chip Casserole

I hope this works.

I made a chicken rice potato chip casserole. But not the standard kind with cream of chicken soup.

I cooked three chicken breasts (but only ended up using two). Meanwhile my daughter made a sauce of the following:

- one cup homemade chicken stock

- 1/3 cup mayo

- 1/2 cup soy milk

We added spices:

- parsley

- Himalayan pink salt 

- black pepper

- garlic

- mustard

- ras el hanout

- nutmeg

- cheddar cheese dip mix (about 2-3 tablespoons)

We mixed into the sauce:

- 2 cups raw spinach

- 1 cup northern beans

We placed one cup cooked rice on the bottom of the casserole dish. We layered sauce/mix onto the rice, put in the chicken chucks, and then sprinkled a touch of Parmesan and mozzerella cheese on it. We put the rest of the sauce/mix on top, added more cheese and topped the whole mess with crushed potato chips. 

I put it in the oven, uncovered, at 325 for 30 minutes...

It's a tad bland. I need to jazz up the spice blend more.

Escargot Profiterole

My daughter has impetuously decided to spend the evening with her Mimi, and when the child is away... Mom and Dad eat crap. Or maybe not crap.

For breakfast, the daughter had leftover broccoli pizza. We had a homemade multigrain roll toasted with imported French butter.

Now, for dinner, we headed to Wegmans. We are downloading the Star Trek movie (my husband said to get the HD version and it's twice as large as the standard file and it's taking forever.) What did we buy? Not groceries, per se... But the makings for a crazy fun dinner. And some other stuff.

Dinner: Escargot Profiterole (Wegmans Seafood hors d'oeuvres) with a red Bordeaux) and dates. Either coffee and pain au chocolat (chocolate croissants) OR lemon bars (with tea?). And for the movie, Spicy Thai Kettle Potato chips.

What we bought:

• one 8-ounce bottle of mint chocolate milk for the husband, $1.35
• Escargot Profiterole, from the frozen food aisle, 9 pieces, $9.99
• Spicy Thai potato chips, Kettle Chips brand, $2.99
• Wegmans 100 percent juice (grape), $1.99
• 2 pack of lemon bars from the bakery, $3
• 2 chocolate croissants, $2.50
• Organic bulk field mix, for the tortoise, 78 cents
• bananas, 49 cents a pound, 84 cents
• Fresh dates, $5.99 a pound, $3.65

Update: The dates went wonderfully with the bordeaux, and I think we're going to opt for the pain au chocolat for dessert to better accompany the red wine (split infinitive- oh no). The escargot were fine, tasted more or less like nothing... but the sauce and pastry.

Another update: I gave my daughter one of the leftover escargot appetizers and explained it was snails. Her snail fell out of his pastry, so she put him back in and popped him in her mouth. She loved it.

Coffeecake and Egg sandwiches

So, we had coffeecake from Friday for breakfast yesterday and today. Yesterday we finished the blueberry and today we started on the nut and the plain. For lunch yesterday, we had the rest of the salad my friend Kim made me for lunch Friday (it was huge) and peanut butter toast. The picnic we attended for July 4 started at 2 p.m., so I didn't want a heavy lunch.

For dinner Friday night, we had leftover pizza from my daughter's birthday I had frozen.

Today. while my husband took our daughter to the park, I brewed some green and pomegranite teas to make iced tea. For lunch we had egg sandwiches with eggs from Klein Farm on my homemade rye-sesame rolls. I fried the eggs with parsley from the garden. Some cheddar cheese on the eggs. We all had different condiments. I had French dijon mustard. My husband had vegan mayo. My daughter had ketchup. I served with some salt and vinegar potato chips and blueberries and cherries.

Chicken Salad à la Oua Oua

That lame title is my idea of a joke. I'm trying to make chicken salad sound fancy by making it French. Chicken Salad à la Oua Oua. Otherwise known as Wawa. I think I've mentioned before that I like Wawa. 

For a convenience store, they have a good variety of real food. When we vacationed in Cape May, we survived on Wawa... Our daughter was 2 and she didn't need a $10 kids meal like what we found in many of the restaurants. So we bought lots of fruit and chicken salad at Wawa.

That may even be how we discovered the chicken salad at Wawa. I like a good chicken salad. My high school English teacher makes incredible chicken salad with grapes. Then I tried the chicken-apple-walnut salad at the coffee shop by my office. Also great. When my husband came home with the American croissants from the warehouse club, it made me hungry for chicken salad. Except I've never made chicken salad and I don't have chicken.

Since the family had salad for lunch, and homemade blueberry muffins for breakfast, and peaches for snack, I had chicken salad and (GASP) potato chips (Herrs Salt and Pepper Kettle Chips) for dinner.

Tomorrow my mother-in-law is prepping chicken and dumplings for me to make for my dad. Oh, and I made bread today, but it... well... was impotent. I left it rise while I went to class, and the dough was gorgeous when I got back. But when I formed the baguettes and left them for the final rise... They didn't expand. I can only guess I had left them rise too long during class. Then two of the three stuck to the pan. So I have three short, stubby loaves...