Funeral Food

Well, in all seriousness, this recipe really was prepared to accommodate our relatives following a family funeral. We just could not think of a better title.

Our dear Papa Bob passed away unexpectedly in January. We spent several extra days after the funeral baking and cooking for the relatives living in his hometown. We relished the time we were able to spend with our family by relaxing and helping through our cooking.

We decided Ree's Chicken Spaghetti (p. 130) would be the perfect comfort food to prepare. We had been busy cooking all day, so this dish had to wait until about 10:00 p.m. We'll just say that's the reason we didn't use a whole chicken...it was late...not that we're squeamish about handling a whole chicken. It was late. Got that? Good.

We began by dicing very un-threatening chicken breasts, and sauteing the meat in a skillet.

Next we diced green pepper, a small onion and added a small jar of pimentos to the mix.

We prepared our pasta.

Once the pasta was done, we placed it in a dish and mixed it with two cans of cream of mushroom soup and a whole lotta cheddar cheese. That's how much: a whole lotta.

See the red spoon in the above photo? Yeah, we broke it. How? Well, it was just a left-over large, plastic spoon you might use at a picnic. We are starting a "Replace Queenie's Spoon Fund" if you would care to donate. Queenie is Jo's mother. And we love her dearly. She is an incredibly organized and put-together woman, yet she doesn't care a lick about cooking. She does a fine job at cooking; she simply doesn't care about replacing a plastic, red spoon.

Next we added our veggies to the pasta mix. Also added was the cooked chicken and chicken broth.

The entire dish was seasoned with salt, pepper and Old Bay seasoning. Ree's recipe calls for cayenne pepper, of which we did not have on hand, so Old Bay came to the rescue. This was stirred together, and we oohed and ahhed over the pretty colors. Maybe we were just a little delirious from being tired, but it really is a colorful dish.

All of this was poured into a rectangular baking dish and topped with more cheddar cheese. This baked at 350-degrees for approximately 40 minutes. We highly recommend trying this dish, whether you use a whole chicken or wimpy chicken breasts, like we did. And, boy, did it make for a really nice snack at 11:00 p.m.

Happily full,