Cheesy Bacon Chicken Casserole – Nance and Robyn make the same recipe

Every week we’ll post a recipe that we both made. This week’s recipe was Cheesy Bacon Chicken Casserole. Printable recipe can be found at the bottom of this post.  The original recipe can be found over at The Coers Family.

Robyn’s Take:

This week’s recipe was submitted by Jai. (We have so many reader-submitted recipes in the queue that for the time being we’re going to do reader-submitted recipes every week. That might change in the future, we’ll see how it goes.)

Your ingredientses:

Cheesy Chicken Bacon Bake 1

Boneless, skinless chicken breasts, bacon, cream of chicken soup, Monterey Jack cheese, spiral pasta, garlic powder, and salt and pepper.

The first thing you need to do is make your bacon. Luckily, there’s a simple step-by-step instructional post on the easiest way to make bacon in the oven. You don’t have to make your bacon like that, if you don’t mind walking around with spatters of bacon all over your shirt front and tiny little burned-oil spots on your hands and arms, then you go on with your bad self and make your bacon on the stovetop. You could also make it in the microwave. Whatever works for you works for me. You do what you feel is right (even if it’s wrong.) No judgement here! Who am I, Amanda? As long as you don’t make me clean up the grease spatters, I don’t care how you make your bacon.

(But if you’re making your bacon in the oven, these cooling racks are perfect. I actually got that cooling rack as part of a package – a “value pack” – but I like that cooling rack way more than the stackable ones I’ve had forever and which are kind of flimsy. Also, what’s the point of having stackable cooling racks when you never actually stack them?)

While the bacon is cooking, chop your chicken into bite-sized pieces.

Cheesy Chicken Bacon Bake 2

Raw chicken! Is there anything less appetizing? I don’t think so.

Also, at some point, make your pasta using the directions on the back of the box. I think I waited ’til the bacon was done to put the pot on, but then I was stuck waiting for the pasta to be done cooking. Kitchen timing: I suck at it.

Cheesy Chicken Bacon Bake 3

When your bacon is done, put it on paper towels to cool so that you don’t burn your fingers when you crumble it, and then dump all (or at least some) of the bacon fat from the cookie sheet you baked the bacon on, into a large skillet. Let it heat, and then toss your chicken in there.

Cheesy Chicken Bacon Bake 4

While the chicken is cooking, once your bacon has cooled, crumble it into smallish pieces. Try not to cram it all in your face instead, because then you won’t have it for the casserole and then everyone will be very very sad.

When the chicken is cooked through and your pasta is cooked and drained, then throw everything (chicken, salt, pepper, and garlic powder, cream of chicken soup, pasta) except the bacon and 1 cup of the Monterey Jack into the pot you used to make your pasta. Mix it together well.

Cheesy Chicken Bacon Bake 6

Once it’s well mixed, dump it into a 9×13″ baking dish, which you have already sprayed with cooking spray.

Sprinkle the top evenly with your crumbled bacon, and then top with your remaining 1 cup of Monterey Jack cheese.

Cheesy Chicken Bacon Bake 7

Bake until the cheese is melted and starting to brown on the top. I might have let mine bake a little too long.

Cheesy Chicken Bacon Bake 8

While it’s cooling enough to be eaten, go snuggle with your resident ham-hog kitty.

Cheesy Chicken Bacon Bake 9
“I know you gots bacon in there.”

Annnnd then eat it.

Cheesy Chicken Bacon Bake 10

The verdict? I wasn’t crazy about it, and I don’t know why. I like all the components that went into it, but just didn’t really care for it all together. IT IS A MYSTERY. Fred said it best when he said that it was “Edible, but not memorable.” In other words, he’ll eat it if it’s put in front of him, but he’d never ever ask for it.

I won’t be making it again (and the way things usually go around here, Nance will be all “OMG BEST THING EVER, A++++!” Damn her.)

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Have a recipe you want us to make? Check out this page (there’s also a link to that page up there under the banner) and follow the instructions to submit a recipe!

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Nance’s Take:

Everybody in the house loved this recipe.  Oops…Spoiler!

Come on. We knew this recipe would not be a fail since it had bacon, cheese, chicken and pasta in it. My bitch was not with the taste, but the fact that your ass will be stuck in the kitchen for a while making it.  Casseroles are suppose to be EASY.

Cheesy Chicken Bake

You have to fry the bacon in a skillet. I didn’t do it because Shirley is the queen of frying bacon. Had Shirley not been around I would have used Robyn’s baken method. And if it would have messed up my stove I would have made Robyn fly up here and clean it. She needs to come visit anyway.  We’ve got things to talk about. Like how to avoid the fucking Food Blogging Illuminati and shit.

Cheesy Chicken Bake

This part upset me because I am trying to watch what I eat and damn, frying chicken up in bacon grease just got to me. Shirley didn’t drain the bacon grease out before she did this so those motherfuckers were deep fried in bacon grease. If I have a heart attack, MOM.

Cheesy Chicken Bake

My mother drives me ape-shit because she never uses the right tools when she’s cooking. Here she is frying chicken with a bowl scraper/spatula that you use for cake mixing and such. I have no idea how I learned to cook when I have a mother like this. Thank God for cable and cooking shows.

Cheesy Chicken Bake

Shirley was handling the casserole because I was busy doing other things. Rick came home from a work trip with goodies! A massive amount of pretzels from a pretzel factory in Reading, Pa.

Cheesy Chicken Bake

I don’t have a banana for scale, but I do have the husband. That’s a lot of motherfucking pretzels, man! And oh my God, so freaking good.

Cheesy Chicken Bake

I suppose it should be noted that I once again over-cooked the pasta. Remember that kitchen trick where people say to throw spaghetti at the wall? WTF? I never understood it. If I threw food at the wall, Shirley would kick my ass. No throwing food, dammit.

I know those aren’t Rotini. I have 10,000 boxes of pasta back on my shelf and not one of them was Rotini (we call them springs).  I made an executive decision to USE WHAT I HAVE because The Beagle killed my money tree* this summer.

Cheesy Chicken Bake

Here’s a little secret nobody knows about me. I have never crumbled bacon in my life. I have always used kitchen scissors. I cannot even fathom what crumbling bacon is like and I don’t want to find out.

Cheesy Chicken Bake

Uh-oh, a cat creeping up on my bacon!  KILL IT.

Cheesy Chicken Bake

You throw everything into a bowl and mix it together. Shirley used her bowl scraper/spatula again. GAWD.

Cheesy Chicken Bake

And then you throw it into the casserole dish. That’s not hard at all.

Cheesy Chicken Bake

Bacon and another freaking cup of cheese go on top.  Now toss that bad boy in the oven for 20 minutes.

Cheesy Chicken Bake

Beagle is always appalled at how much bacon is wasted on The Humans. This picture was snapped while she was trying to get that bacon-creeping cat to play with her.  It did not end well and feelings were hurt.

Cheesy Chicken Bake

Everybody got really excited when this came out of the oven. Rick was especially excited because he loves it when the cheese gets brown. Yes, those are more bags of pretzels back there.  I wonder when I’ll start craving potato chips.

Cheesy Chicken Bake

It’s not a pretty dish, but it tasted really good (of course!). My problem is that this reminds me of a dish Pioneer Woman would make and that pretty much sums up why it’s not going into our rotation. It’s just too much for me to be comfortable serving on the regular.  My family drives me crazy, but I wanna keep them around for at least a little while longer.

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* Vet bills are a bitch so I’ve been staying at home and window shopping via the Internet.  As I come across things that I think are interesting or unique, I’ll post them as an affiliate link here.  Robyn and I want beach mansions so feel free to shop till you drop, baby!  

Flexible measuring cups – They’re microwaveable (melting butter or cheese). And I love the idea of having control when I’m pouring something.  Okay, honestly.  I want these because I think they’ll be perfect to drizzle butter all over my popcorn. I really like popcorn.

This Breakfast Sandwich Maker is the shits!  I would totally get this for Trey if he would ever decide what he wants to do with his life.  Trade school, college…COME ON, man!  Perfect gift for that male (or female) that doesn’t have much of a clue in the kitchen.  I just think it’s neat.

If you’re making a sandwich without a spreader, you’re doing it wrong.  Look, I spent 40 years making sandwiches and smearing butter all over my toast with a butter knife and dammit, they are useless.  Get one of these and you’ll realize how pathetic your life really was before I told you what to do.  Make sure you buy two because you’re going to be pissed if one’s in the dishwasher when you’re wanting to make a sandwich.

Chop and Drop Silicone Cutting Boards.  Where have you been all of my life? God, I’ve had Shirley dropping raw chicken all over my hands while trying to put it in freezer bags for years.  I had no idea, but you can bet your ass I’m asking Santa for this.

Bwahaha.  The Squatty Potty.  Robyn told me about this one because we both listen to Keith and the Girl and The Girl talks about how she uses a waste basket to lift her feet up when she goes to the bathroom.  And this is where you have to ask yourself the most important question of all.  Do you throw your pride out the window in order to take a better shit?   Hmm.  What Would DCEP Do?

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Cheesy Bacon Chicken Casserole - Nance and Robyn make the same recipe
 
Prep time
Cook time
Total time
 
: Entree
Cuisine: Casserolandia
Serves: 8
Ingredients
  • 4 - 5 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
  • 6 strips of bacon
  • 2 cans cream of chicken soup
  • 2 c. shredded Monterey Jack cheese
  • 16 oz dried spiral pasta
  • 1 T garlic powder
  • Salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
  1. Cook bacon. While the bacon is cooking, cut chicken into small bite-sized pieces.
  2. When the bacon is done cooking, set aside to cool. When bacon is cool, crumble it into small pieces.
  3. Cook the cut-up chicken in bacon drippings (if you made your bacon in the oven, just dump the grease from the baking pan into a large skillet.)
  4. Add garlic powder. Add salt and pepper to taste.
  5. While the chicken is cooking, prepare pasta according to the directions on the back of the box.
  6. Drain the pasta and return it to the pot you cooked it in.
  7. Add chicken, both cans of cream of chicken soup, 1 cup of cheese. Stir together well.
  8. Spray 9x13 baking dish with cooking spray; pour chicken mixture into dish. Top with crumbled bacon and then with remaining 1 cup of cheese.
  9. Bake at 400 for 15 - 20 minutes, until cheese is melted and beginning to brown on top.

 

Creamy Pasta Salad – Nance and Robyn make the same recipe

Every week we’ll post a recipe that we both made. This week’s recipe was Creamy Pasta Salad, found over at Simply Real moms. Printable recipe can be found at the bottom of this post.

Robyn’s Take:

This week’s recipe was my choice. I don’t have a clue where I spotted it – most likely on Pinterest. With the weather finally kind of warming up, summer cookouts are on the horizon, and what’s better with grilled burgers and steaks than pasta salads that you can throw together in advance so that they’re ready and sitting in the fridge when it’s time to eat?

Your ingredients:

PastaSalad (1)

Mini pepperoni (you could use regular sized, but the minis are so CUTE!), shell pasta, frozen peas (thawed), carrots, broccoli (the original recipe called for a head of broccoli, chopped, but I opted for the easier way), and cheese sticks. Also, there’s a packet of ranch dressing mix. The original recipe called for ranch dressing and then said that the kind you make yourself, from the packet, is way better.

We’ll discuss ranch dressing in a bit.

Also, the recipe called for “shaped pasta.” As is my way, I wrote down the ingredients that I needed to buy at the grocery store, and then when I was actually AT the store, I was like “What the fuck is ‘shaped pasta’?” So I bought wagon wheel pasta (what? Wagon wheels are a SHAPE.) and then when I got home, I went to the site where I got the recipe from, and saw that she’d used shell pasta. So I made Fred stop on his way home from work and buy a box of shell pasta because I’m a stickler for stupid details like that, even though I’m sure the wagon wheel pasta would have been fine. Also, I now have a box of wagon wheel pasta in my cabinet. What the fuck am I supposed to do with that shit?

Put your pasta on to cook, and while it’s cooking, chop up your carrots. I opted to dice them by hand, cutting the carrots into coins and then cutting each coin into little squares, and hello. What a pain in the ass.

PastaSalad (2)

Next time, I’m just going to chop them up in the food processor.

I cut the broccoli florets into smaller pieces, then tossed them into the bowl with the carrots and peas.

PastaSalad (3)

This is where I predict that Nance is going to have a hissy about the peas, because although she and I never discuss the recipes beforehand (that would ruin the surprise aspect of it), she did say something along the lines of “Peas in a pasta salad? WTF?”

There are people, like my friend Liz, who takes the very existence of peas as a personal affront. I happen to LOVE PEAS WITH AN ABIDING PASSION and I would add them to everything. I think that if you want to make this pasta salad and don’t like peas, then perhaps you would leave them out. That goes for everything else in the recipe – if you don’t like it, leave it out. (Though if you hate peas AND broccoli AND carrots, you might want to skip the whole thing.)

I know, it’s a revolutionary idea. You heard it here first, folks.

Cut up your cheese sticks and add them to the bowl, too. I actually sliced my cheese sticks in fairly thin slices, but I’d advise cutting them in chunks rather than slices. Takes less time, and I’d rather have a chunk of cheese than a slice. But you can go with your own personal preference. I won’t tell anyone. Also, of note: the original recipe called for Monterey Jack cheese sticks. I looked in two different grocery stores, and there were NO Monterey Jack cheese sticks to be found, no matter how hard I looked. So I bought Colby Jack sticks instead, and that worked just fine. Cheese experts (and Amanda) will gasp and shake their heads when I say this, but I’m going to say it anyway: cheese is cheese. I like most cheese, except for the kind that smells like feet. I’ll pass on that kind, thanks.

PastaSalad (5)

Once the pasta was done, I drained it, then laid it out on paper towels to drain further. THEN I pressed lightly on the pasta with a piece of paper towel in an attempt to get it as dry as possible. In retrospect, that was going a bit overboard. I truly don’t think a little bit of water in the pasta salad would have hurt anything.

Toss the mini pepperoni and cheese chunks into the bowl…

PastaSalad (7)

Add the pasta….

PastaSalad (8)

Not shown: the part where I put the lid on the bowl and shook the bowl vigorously to combine everything. Also not shown: the part where I added the entire batch of Ranch dressing (which I made earlier in the day) and stirred it all together well.

The finished product:

PastaSalad (9)

The verdict? Fred said it was “okay”, but I was super surprised when he informed me that he just doesn’t care for pasta salads. Seriously, we’ve been married for almost 15 years, and I had no idea he was not a fan of pasta salads. Well, hmph to him, I say.

My verdict? Here is where we discuss Ranch dressing. I’ve been myself for 45 years. I KNOW I’ve had Ranch dressing multiple times in that 45 years. And yet it came clear to me only as I was eating my bowl of pasta salad that I do not like Ranch dressing.

Just not a fan.

Don’t like it.

Um. What? What kind of an idiot doesn’t KNOW that she doesn’t LIKE ranch dressing? Good god.

So while I like EVERYTHING in this pasta salad EXCEPT the Ranch dressing, the Ranch dressing coats everything, and thus I only ate one small bowl of it, and the chickens got the rest. They liked it a LOT. Apparently THEY like Ranch dressing.

I’m such an idiot.

dumbass

I’m very much up for trying a different kind of dressing if you guys have any suggestions. (Also, I think this would be good with the addition of chopped up zucchini, which I will try this summer.)

Sincerely,

Robyn the Dumbass.

Come join us on Facebook!

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Nance’s take:

I’m thinking that I’m just going to start my entries with the following…

Nance’s excuse as to why her entry is late this time:  My friend, Regan, came over for a visit on Saturday.  I hadn’t seen her in a while so we had some serious catching up to do (translation: yapyapyapyapyap!).  I probably crawled into bed around 3:45 am.  Yup.  AM.  I don’t know about yunz, but my almost 48-year-old body was fucked come Sunday.  Just fucked.  I tried to sleep-in, but my body is an idiot that likes to wake up as if I have The Milking to do.  I tried to take a nap and my body only allowed for one hour (Boo me!).  I finally got on a roll with this pasta salad, but my brain let me down when something changed on my computer and I lost my freaking photos.  They were lost and I was tired and fuck me…time to write an email to Robyn.  Again.  

So I think we can safely say that this time it is all Regan’s fault.  Hee!

Pasta Salad

Rick found the freaking pictures.  I am stupid.  This is pasta cooking. I’m pretty sure that everyone knows how to cook pasta and this is not the way that it’s done. Too small of a pan, too much pasta. Please feel free to snark about my mother.  Shirley was all up in this recipe and she picked out the pan.  Note:  It is not her special stainless steel pan.  God forbid that something should happen to it.

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I love pasta salad. I really, really do! Meats, cheese and pasta. Yum! But man, you start throwing a bunch of vegetables in there and I start thinking it’s a trick diet food.  If you ask me, I will tell you that I like broccoli.  What I won’t tell you is that I only like broccoli when it’s smothered in cheese.  Fresh broccoli?  This is the first time in my life I have ever made anything with it.  NO LIE.  My uncle Chuck called my mother on Friday morning and asked her if we needed any broccoli because he had too much of it.  My mother asked me if we wanted it and I was all, “OHHELLNO!”  And then I remembered that I had to make this recipe so I made her call him back.  Heh.

I had to use The Google to figure out what to do with this fresh broccoli business.  After learning way too much about the different ways to cook broccoli I decided to blanche it.

Pasta Salad

Blanche (from Wikipedia): Blanching is a cooking process wherein the food substance, usually a vegetable or fruit, is plunged into boiling water, removed after a brief, timed interval, and finally plunged into iced water or placed under cold running water (shocked) to halt the cooking process.

Pasta Salad

I put them in for 1½ minutes.  That thing I’m using is called a wok strainer (amazon affiliate link).  Do we have a wok?  Nope.  I’m assuming I saw it in a store somewhere and decided I needed it.  It gets used often even without a wok and it worked great here.

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I was really excited about how pretty the color got, but was also afraid that they were going to really taste like vegetables with all that freaking green!   Please note:  I am using my mother’s special stainless steel pot here (entry about it over here).  Hell may have frozen over on Sunday.

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Me, drying the pasta off with a paper towel, while wondering why I thought doing a cooking blog would be fun. And seriously, DRYING OFF MY PASTA? WTF?

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Cheese! I used cheddar and monterey jack.  I have no cheese sticks in my house.  I also did not buy special pepperoni.  I took what I had in the freezer (slices) and quartered that shit.  Truth:  Shirley chunked the cheese and quartered the pepperoni.  I just stood around looking fabulous while drying off that goddamned pasta.

Pasta Salad

LOOK AT HOW PRETTY!!!!

Pasta Salad

I had Ranch with Bacon so I used that instead of regular ranch dressing. No, I did not make homemade. Like I had time to do that with all the blanching I was doing? The blanching didn’t take that long and I think it made a world of difference. On the original recipe web site, a commenter wrote that she added 1/2 Ranch and 1/2 Italian dressing because it added a little zip. I decided to try that out.

Pasta Salad

My mom doesn’t like Italian dressing (I told you she was INSANE). It’s the main reason why she won’t eat pasta salads. I mixed the two dressings together and gently mixed the whole shebang up.  Yes, Robyn.  There are peas in there even if I hate them.  I used to like them, but I had an incident involving a homemade pot pie and a heavy hand with peas and it was game over after that.  I picked them out when I ate it.  LIKE A BOSS.

Pasta Salad
My mother was going to my uncle Chuck’s house for dinner. She took this and they all loved it. Every single person in this house loved it, too! It wasn’t until later that I remembered that I completely forgot the carrots! But it was still great and, to be honest, it was just one less vegetable I would have picked out while I was eating it.  But I would like to note that I ate the shit out of that broccoli though!

It’s a winner in this house, but I definitely noted the differences (the Italian dressing, Bacon Ranch and no carrots) before it went into the cookbook.

Felina/Pasta Salad

Felina wants everyone to know that she does not approve of these cat-loving shenanigans.  And please excuse Nance’s photos because she was fighting hardcore with the copyright thingie and it blows.  Send treats!
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Creamy Pasta Salad - Nance and Robyn make the same recipe
 
Prep time
Total time
 
: Side Dish
Cuisine: Norwegian
Serves: 12
Ingredients
  • ½ of a 16-ounce box of shell pasta (I used medium shells and would recommend those)
  • 1 head of broccoli, chopped OR half a 12-ounce bag of broccoli florets (you might want to cut the broccoli florets even smaller than they are)
  • 
1 cup frozen peas, thawed
  • ½ of a 5-ounce pack mini pepperonis (regular pepperoni will work, too)
  • 
8 Monterey Jack (or any kind, really. Whatever you have on hand works.) cheese sticks cut into chunks
  • 
3 medium carrots, chopped
  • 
Ranch dressing - make your own or use the prepared stuff from a bottle
Instructions
  1. Cook your pasta according to the directions on the box; drain it. Let it cool, and then dump it onto a paper towel to drain further.
  2. Put all the ingredients except Ranch dressing into a big bowl.
  3. Add the Ranch dressing. Go with your own personal preferences as far as how much dressing to use. I used the whole batch (which I mixed up from the envelope) and it worked out pretty well.
  4. Mix together well and serve (or chill until dinner time!)

 

Lasagna Soup – Nance & Robyn Make The Same Recipe

Every week we’ll post a recipe that we both made. This week’s recipe was Lasagna Soup, found over at PaulaDeen.com. Printable recipe can be found at the bottom of this post.

Robyn’s Take:

This week’s recipe was Nance’s choice, and I was looking forward to it, but a little iffy on it, too. Because I like lasagna, but I kind of don’t like little chunks of tomato in soups and stews. I can’t help it, there’s something about tomato chunks in liquid that ooks me out, the way they float around glaring up at me, looking all chunky. Maybe it’s ’cause I hated tomatoes as a kid (though loved ketchup and didn’t mind tomato sauce, go figure) and it’s a holdover from that.

ANYway, because I am a ray of shining light, I was willing to deal with chunky tomato bits for the team. I’m wonderful like that.

Ingredients:

Lasagna Soup (1)

Ground beef and cheese and lasagna noodles and spices and tomato stuff and such. The original recipe calls for a chopped green bell pepper, but I don’t do peppers, so I just increased the amount of onion instead.

In a dutch oven, combine the ground beef and chopped onions and garlic and cook over medium-high heat ’til the beef is browned and crumbly. Is there anything better than the smell of ground beef, onion, and garlic? I think not.

Lasagna Soup (2)

Drain it!

Lasagna Soup (3)

Combine everything except the cheeses and noodles in the dutch oven.

Lasagna Soup (4)

Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes. Then add your noodles and stir until the noodles are tender. I don’t like feeling up noodles for tenderness, so I checked the package that the noodles came in to see how long they needed to cook, cooked them for that long, and assumed they were tender. Then stir in your parmesan cheese.

Preheat the broiler in your oven. Now, the recipe says to “ladle the soup into 8 – 10 ovenproof bowls.” Well, I wasn’t going to do that, because there are only two of us, and why the hell would we make 8 – 10 bowls of the stuff for just the two of us?

So I just made the two bowls, sprinkled a bit of mozzarella on top of each bowl of soup, and then broiled the soup ’til the cheese was melted.

During the part of the recipe where I was waiting for the noodles to tenderize, I made crostini. I have no idea at this point if Nance made the crostini or not, but I felt it was important that I have pieces of garlicky bread to shove in my face. It’s pretty easy – slice a baguette, brush the slices with olive oil, salt and pepper it, cook it ’til it’s brown. Rub it with smashed garlic, then think to yourself “Hey, wouldn’t a sprinkle of cheese on this bread be the perfect touch?”, sprinkle mozzarella on each slice, and stick it back in the oven until the cheese is melted.

Crostini (1)

Crostini (2)

Then serve slices of crostini with the soup.

Lasagna Soup (6)

The verdict: thumbs way, way, WAY up! This stuff was SO FREAKIN’ GOOD. You know how I mentioned my dislike of chunky tomato pieces? I totally did NOT even notice the chunky tomato pieces. We ate this for dinner for two more nights, and then I got three lunches out of it. We will absolutely be making this again. The only thing I’ll do differently next time is to break the lasagna noodles into smaller pieces. Other than that, this recipe is perfect as is!

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Nance’s Take:

I do not even like soup.  Soup is messy.  I am an uncoordinated slob and it always ends up where it’s not supposed to be. Dribbling down my face. On my clothes. Ugh. I am way too obsessive to be a good soup eater. Awkward people fret about eating in public bad enough without worrying about holding the spoon just right. Not slurping. OHMYGAWD, THE BRAIN WORKS SO HARD FOR THE SOUP! It’s not worth it!

So yeah. I have no idea why I picked this recipe either. I’m not a huge Paula Deen fan (although with my love of butter you’d think she would be my queen). I liked her well enough before she got involved with branding and her name was on everything. I really remember an ad campaign that ran on the aisle televisions at the local Walmart. It would creep me out because she sounds exactly like my mother-in-law. Same accent, same voice. I was forever forgetting about those televisions and turning around looking for my mother-in-law when I was in that store. Drove me nuts. Speaking of nuts, have you seen the Paula Deen Riding Things Meme? Hilarious.

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Shirley took this picture. It is the only picture she took of the onions so it is safe to assume that there will not be a How To Cut An Onion Lesson again.  It makes me laugh when I see that onion because it was huge and we’ve just been chopping parts of it off at a time instead of cutting the entire thing.  Creative people up in here.  Or lazy.  Heh.

Note: my pictures are going to be even worse than they normally are because I was trying to learn how to use a new flash.  You can pretty much see where my career in photography is heading.

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Good thing I bought that spice rack from Sam’s Club a while back. Otherwise, I would have no idea what exactly Paula Deen meant when she wrote Italian Seasoning in the ingredients list. And also, would not have had time to go buy Thyme (har-dee-har).

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I did not take a picture of the ground beef browning experience because I’m thinking you guys know how that looks. And we’re just going to pretend that those are petite diced tomatoes in there because I had cans of regular size diced tomatoes in the house.  Pro-tip:  You don’t need a dutch oven for this recipe.  A regular ol’ pot will do just fine.

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I made the executive decision to add more than 2 cups of broken lasagna noodles because of the first paragraph in which I wrote that I’m not a big fan of soup. The measuring cup above is a standard 2-cup measuring cup. We just heaped it as high as it would go.

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Action shot! Just imagine how great this picture would have been if I would have had decent lighting?

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I did not have a thin French baguette to make crostini with. I did, however, have some French hard rolls because I was in a sandwich kind of mood the day before. Points for improvisation!

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Voila! It was more Taste Like Lasagna Chili instead of soup because I used so many noodles, but everyone here loved it so I was happy. It also made me realize that this is a lot less hassle than making lasagna the normal way (cooking the noodles, layering everything, etc.) so it will definitely show up in the meal rotation.  I think I’m going to play around with fresh noodles (Shirley has a pasta roller and knows how to use it) and ricotta cheese next time to see what I come up with, but it’s a keeper for me!

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You knew I wasn’t going to forget to show Felina taking one for the team.  God bless that little shit of a dog.  Obligatory reminder: We wash our dishes with dishwashing detergent, hot water and chlorine bleach. It’s all good!

(Comments closed due to spammers.)

 
Ingredients
  • 1 lb ground chuck
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 1 green bell pepper, chopped
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 teaspoon thyme
  • 1 tablespoon firmly packed brown sugar
  • 1 (32 ounce) box chicken broth
  • 2 (14.5 ounce) can petite diced tomatoes
  • 1 (15 ounce) can tomato sauce
  • 2 teaspoon Italian seasoning
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 2 cup broken lasagna noodles
  • 1 (5 ounce) package grated parmesan cheese
  • 2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
  • -----------------------
  • Garlic Crostini:
  • 1 thin French baguette
  • ½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
  • 2 cloves smashed garlic
  • Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Instructions
  1. In a large Dutch oven, combine ground chuck, onion, bell pepper and garlic. Cook over medium-high heat for 8 to 10 minutes, stirring occasionally until beef is browned and crumbles. Drain well.
  2. Stir in thyme, brown sugar, broth, diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, Italian seasoning, and salt. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat; reduce heat and simmer 20 minutes. Add noodles, and simmer until noodles are tender.
  3. Stir in Parmesan cheese.
  4. Preheat broiler. Ladle soup into 8 to 10 ovenproof bowls. Evenly sprinkle with mozzarella cheese. Broil soups, 6-inches from heat, 3 to 4 minutes, until cheese is browned and bubbly. Add a garlic crostini slice on top. Serve immediately.
  5. For the garlic crostini:
  6. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
  7. Cut bread into ¼-inch round slices. Place on baking sheet and brush each slice with olive oil. Season with salt and pepper; place in oven and bake until golden and crisp, about 15 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool slightly. Rub each side with smashed garlic cloves.