Imperial Chicken

This is a long time favorite.

I got this recipe from my roommate in college. I went to her home for the weekend and her Mom, a very good cook and such a nice women, served this yummy chicken recipe. It's called Imperial Chicken and it is very easy to make, and everyone I have ever cooked it for has liked it. It is my partner's favorite. :-)

These are the ingredients:

1- 1/12 lbs of boneless chicken breasts
1 cup of bread crumbs
1/2 cup of grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup of parsley flakes
1 stick of butter
1 can of cream of mushroom soup
a little milk
white instant rice

Melt one stick of butter in a bowl in the microwave. Combine the breadcrumbs, Parmesan cheese, and parsley flakes in another bowl. Immerse the chicken pieces in the bowl of butter and then roll them in the other bowl of crumbs, Parmesan cheese and parsley flakes until they are completely covered. Place them in a casserole, baking dish, or cookie sheet that has been sprayed with Pam. Then dribble any extra butter over the chicken and sprinkle some additional parsley flakes on top. Cook 30-40 minutes.

Serve with white rice, and make a gravy for the rice and chicken by heating up cream of mushroom soup with a little milk mixed in.

FYI: I do not use fresh breadcrumbs, Parmesan cheese, or parsley flakes. I use store bought/ label brands for all and it turns out yummy.

Chicken Salad

One day I had very yummy Chicken Salad at my friend Jenn's House, and what was so yummy about it was that it had grapes in it. It would have, of course, been yummy without the grapes, but I just was surprised with how good grapes tasted in a chicken salad.

I love Chicken Salad when it is good. (And Jenn's was good. Yum.).

I use to have a dog walking job (crazy job!) and for awhile I would arrange the order of the pick up and drop off of the dogs, so I could get lunch at a particular convenient store, that had yummy chicken salad sandwiches. I can not remember the name, but I might post it later if I remember. Sometimes changing this order really screwed up my day, but that chicken salad sandwich was yummy.

So any ways, I have never made my own chicken salad, and decided to make chicken salad for a playdate. This time I was not just going to buy chicken salad at Stop and Shop. So my poor friends were guinea pigs to my first chicken salad attempt. Usually I like to have at least made something once before serving to friends.


So I looked first for a recipe at my favorite cooking site, which I have mentioned before, Allrecipes.com. I was trying to find a recipe that was different, but not too different, and that had grapes.




Here is what I found:

INGREDIENTS:

• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 teaspoon poultry seasoning
• 1/4 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 
  
• 3 cups diced, cooked chicken breast meat
• 1/2 cup finely chopped celery
• 1/2 cup chopped green onions
• 1 (8 ounce) can water chestnuts, drained and chopped
• 1 1/2 cups diced Swiss cheese
• 1 1/2 cups halved green grapes!

DIRECTIONS:

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together the mayonnaise, salt, poultry seasoning, onion powder, garlic powder, pepper, and lemon juice.
2. In a large bowl, toss together the chicken, celery, green onions, water chestnuts, Swiss cheese, and grapes. Add the mayonnaise mixture, and stir to coat. Chill until serving.

Serves 8


Now, as I said, I wanted something with grapes that was funky but not too funky, so I decide to leave out some ingredients: The water chestnuts and the Swiss cheese.

One of the things I like about Allrecipes is that you can read reviews of the recipes to find out ways to make it differently or to just find out how others liked it. So when looking through the reviews, I found that a couple people said it would taste just fine without these ingredients. I left them out this time. I intend to try out the original unmodified recipe some other time (with no guinea pigs though!) Cheese and water chestnuts just seems like strange things to add to chicken salad, but before trying Jenn's Chicken Salad, I would have said that about grapes...

So how did it turn out? I thought it was good that day. But the next day, my mom came over and we had the leftovers, and it was so good then. Yum. I loved it.

There was a couple of healthy bonuses to this recipe:

I thought it tasted better with wheat rolls than white. I used Natures Promise wheat sandwich rolls.

I also used lowfat mayonnaise. I used Cains. I did not miss the high fat mayonnaise at all.


I also made Swedish Meatballs. I think this was a nice side dish to add to Chicken Salad sandwiches. I overcooked them a little though. :-(

Others brought stuff too. We also had a yummy salad with dressing that I loved and yummy cookies which my daughter loved!

Afterward, we took the kids outside and it was a surprisingly warm day.

Yummy food and a great playdate.