Two hours one evening
We all know it’s no secret that I am not a chef. In fact once, I even messed up rice krispie treats because I tried to make them from memory. Brent came home and threw something away only to find the marshmallows and rice krispies in the can. He laughed. I teared up.
I have a few cookbooks I’m trying out. Tonight’s was The Pampered Chef, Main Dishes. Seriously, I should have stopped at Pamphered Chef and pulled out Velveeta. But nevertheless, I pressed onward. The recipe calls for a 25 minute prep time. I’m pretty sure this is a type-o. I think what the authors actually meant to put was 95 minutes of prep time. At least I had Italian music and wooden spoons to keep me company.
The name of this recipe is Chicken Broccoli Braid from the Main Dishes cookbook by Pampered Chef. You can find the recipe online by clicking HERE.
I started by boiling the chicken. During this time, I also helped Breanna with a little project she has going, so let’s take away a few minutes of that prep time. I’m sure I lost track of time and cooked the chicken a little longer than necessary.
The recipe called for broccoli and a red bell pepper. This resulted in me opening the freezer only to find that the fresh broccoli I thought we had was really limp, frozen broccoli all clumped together. Not to mention, it was WELL past freezer burn. Another veggie in the trash. That left the red bell pepper to be prepped. Only my bell pepper was green. Sometimes you just chop what you got. There are several other ingredients in which I used a substitute.
Here are my substitutes:
For the 1 garlic clove pressed. I used about one tsp of powered garlic
For the 2 tsp dill mix. I just used 1 tsp of dill weed.
Those 2 tbsp of almond slivers, well we had whole almonds in the fridge already. So I just whipped those puppies out and chopped them in half.
I did use the correct amount of cheese. Although really, you should always add more cheese.
By now the chicken was finished boiling and needed to be chopped. It was at this point that my gusto for this meal began to wane. I had no desire to chop this scalding hot chicken by hand. Somehow I managed to remember that my blender came with a food processor attachment. I had to hunt in the back 40 of the cabinet to find the lid. A few whirls later and presto! Chopped chicken! I even threw in the bell pepper pieces for quick spin. On a side note, the recipe called for 2 cups of chopped chicken and by using my magic food processor I acquired about 12 cups of chopped chicken. For. the. love.
Normally I’m the kind of girl who "cleans as she goes”. I am definitely the girl who uses as few dishes as possible. I am also the girl who washes her hands after cracking eggs because I fear the dreaded salmonella. However, this time, I did not clean as I went and I used about 25 more dishes than normal. Hence, the mound of dishes in my sink. I did wash my hands after the egg cracking though.
You have to use 2 cans of crescent rolls. Yes, this is the whole reason I chose this recipe. If you use crescent rolls, you know the food is going to taste fabulous. And if you use cream cheese…… well this post isn’t about cream cheese, but if it was, there would be crescent rolls….and sausage.
Anyways. As you can tell by the name, this was a braided recipe. I know, I set my cooking goals way too high. You must lay one rectangle dough on top of the other. Then you must make your cuts in the dough. I opened the drawer with hopes that a pizza cutter had somehow found it’s way to my house. Oh well. Instead, I got out the paring knife. For cutting the dough, you must cut the pieces 1 1/2 inches apart, 3 inches deep. with 6 inches in the center for the filling. You have got kidding me! I went and got the ruler. It’s ok to laugh, my college roommate was the math major, not me. In college, I was out painting pieces of wood for the next set of a musical, not crunching numbers.
I made a few cuts. It looked wrong. It was 90 minutes from when I started and frustration was setting in, I was about to throw in the towel. I had pictures in my head of balling up the dough and dunking in the trash. But I used my senses, pulled out my phone, and typed in a few words on Google. In just a few minutes, I had a braid. Sort of. It was more of a smushed, criss-cross wanna-be braid, but it worked for me.
Thirty minutes later, a nice brown chicken wanna-be braid came out of the oven. It tasted like chicken salad, only something was missing. (It was probably the cream cheese.) I added few little side dishes (out of a can) and viola! At last, dinner! Have. mercy.
You will be glad to know that after my two hour stint in the kitchen over this meal, the food was edible and filled our tummies.
This recipe taught me a two things:
- Find a new cookbook
- Hope my cousins live forever, because if I ever have to bake the turkey at Thanksgiving…
Cooking this dish wore me out, I think tomorrow we shall dine on corn dogs.
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