Good Afternoon, Rotisserie Chicken Salad!!!

At the grocery store near my house, they sell fresh rotisserie chickens.  (Most grocery stores do, these days).

And whatever chickens were not sold that day, are used to make chicken salad the following day.

And every time I exit the bakery toward the deli, the very nice lady calls out, "Good Afternoon!  Rotisserie Chicken Salad!",  as she hands out samples of it on crackers.

I always get a sample, of course, because it's so good.

So today I had some leftover rotisserie chicken, and decided to make chicken salad out of it.

I ground up the chicken in the blender.  Don't put it all in at once; Put in small batches at a time.

Put the ground chicken in a bowl, and mixed it with hard boiled eggs, 4 parts olive oil mayonnaise to one part mustard, dill pickle relish, sliced green olives, and paprika.

Probably not the exact same recipe as the grocery stores, but it was still very good!

boiled eggs

So why am I writing an article about boiling eggs?  Everybody knows how to do that, right?

Well, sort of.  See, I so seldom boil eggs, that I forget the right way to do it.

And part of the reason I keep this blog, is so I can type my recipes and cooking tips, so I'll remember them!

This morning, I boiled the water first and dropped the eggs in to boil.  Much to my dismay, they cracked!

So I was told by friends that I did it backwards.  You put the eggs in the cold water, and THEN boil them.

Thankfully they were going to be used in chicken salad and chopped up anyway, so it was OK that they cracked.

Personally, I prefer my eggs medium boiled.  (Not hard, not soft).

wings for the superbowl

I don't watch football, but I do have a "tradition" of making wings on superbowl sunday.

But I'm not really a fan of buffalo wings anymore.  So I decided this year to make BBQ and Parmesan Garlic wings!

I used two cast iron pizza pans to make one batch of BBQ and one batch of parmesan garlic.

First I boiled the wings to get the fat out of them.  This is an optional step.

For the BBQ wings, I put some KC Masterpiece BBQ sauce in a bowl, and added brown sugar, soy sauce, onion powder, garlic powder, mustard, and black pepper.

I brushed the wings with the sauce before baking in the oven at 350, and then brushed them again afterwards.  This resulted in a "double layer" of sauce.

For the parmesan garlic wings, I baked them "nude" in the oven at 350.

Then I melted some butter in a bowl*.  Added minced garlic, parmesan cheese, black pepper, onion powder, garlic powder.

*I think next time I'm going to clarify the butter instead.

Brushed the butter sauce on the wings after taking them out of the oven, and added more parmesan cheese on top.

I really liked them both!

My first million dollar casserole

Million dollar casserole?  I have no idea why it's called that.  It certainly didn't cost a million dollars to make.

It's essentially, lasagna, except made with macaroni instead of lasagna noodles.

First you boil your noodles in a pot, of course.

Then you make your sauce.  Tomato sauce, with or without meat.  I made my usual spaghetti sauce.

Then you make your cheese mixture.  I normally use ricotta cheese when I make lasagna, but the recipe I was using said to mix the following:

1/4 cup sour cream, 1 cup cottage cheese, 4 oz cream cheese (half a block), 1/2 cup parmesan cheese, garlic salt, pepper.

Personally I would also add some italian seasonings to the cheese mixture (or oregano and basil).

Then assemble the casserole in a 12 inch cast iron deep skillet.  If you don't have a deep skillet, then two regular skillets will work.

Macaroni on the bottom, then cheese mixture, then sauce, then shredded mozzarella cheese.  

If I were to do this again, I'd add another layer of mozzarella cheese in there.

Into the oven at 375 until done.

I'll be eating this for 3 days, I'm sure!