T's Favorite Chicken and Rice

Sunday was a wonderful, relaxing day here at Final Cookdown HQ. I suppose our relaxation carried straight on through into the work week, since Ramon we have been remiss in posting that day's recipe.

This is my mom's favorite (peep the title) chicken and rice recipe from her childhood, way back in the 1870s. It's simple and just as delicious today. After Ramon conned one of our football-watching guests into helping him learn the art of cutting up a whole chicken, we were ready to go.

• 1 frying chicken, skin removed and cut up into serving pieces
  
• 1½ cups rice
  
• 3 cups water
  
• 1 pkg. dry onion soup mix
  
• 1 stick margarine or enough Butter Buds and hot water to make ½ cup - used unsalted butter
  
• Salt and pepper to taste
  

Mix rice, soup mix, and water in a 9X13 inch baking pan. Season chicken with salt and pepper. Clip margarine over rice or pour Butter Buds all over the rice. Place chicken parts on rice. Cover with foil and bake at 375 for 1½ hours. Do not remove foil while baking.

This was delicious! I have to give Ramon props, because this dish tasted just as good as it does every time my grandpa makes it. The chicken turns out SO moist and finger-lickin' good. Proof? NO leftovers this time. The four of us watching the Cowboys go down in flames :( polished off the chicken. The rice was especially popular. It soaks up the onion flavor and the natural chicken flavor and cooks pretty perfectly.

I'd have to give this an A+ for simplicity and deliciousness. Would cook again. So long as someone else cuts up the chicken.

Cookies and Cream Pie

Interested in a tasty chocolate pie that requires no baking? Um, yes! Me too.

This is one of my favorite desserts that my grandpa makes. Okay, untrue, I love them all! But this ranks pretty highly among PP's desserts that I like when I make them. It's pretty tough to screw this up. And even if you do, the result will probably still be chocolatey & therefore delicious. Win-win.

• 1 6½ oz. pkg. sugar free chocolate sandwich cookies - totally didn't use sugar free. I'm all about real Oreos.
• 1 cup fat free, or low fat, milk
  
• 1 1½ oz. pkg. vanilla sugar free, fat free instant pudding
  
• 4 cups sugar free Cool Whip, thawed
  
• 1 6 oz. graham cracker crust

Place cookies in a heavy duty zip top plastic bag, seal bag and crush cookies with a rolling pin or the bottom of a heavy skillet. Combine milk and pudding mix in a large bowl; stir with a wire whisk until blended. Fold in 3 cups Cool Whip and crushed cookies except for ¼ cup reserved for topping. Spoon mixture into pie crust. Cover and freeze 4 to 6 hours or until firm. Top each serving with 1½ Tbsp. Cool Whip. Sprinkle with reserved crushed cookies.

There's a chance I did something silly this go-around, like get a regular pie crust instead of a graham cracker crust. So I did have to bake that, but it was my own fault! It was still scrumptious but I definitely prefer the graham cracker crust for this guy.

A Bed Bath & Beyond Commercial. Also, Recipes.

Taking a note from my dear husband's playbook, I went the easy route when choosing what to prepare for dinner last night.

Taking a note from my own playbook, I prematurely mitigated this somewhat passive-aggressive move by making not one, not two, but THREE easy recipes. (Wait... does that just make it worse, since I stole three of the easiest recipes we have to make? ...Nah! I think it means I tried three times as hard to make dinner totally yummy.)

First up: the entree. I chose inarguably the easiest meat recipe in the book,

Taco Meat Loaf

• 2 lbs. lean ground meat
• 2 eggs
• 2 pkgs. taco seasoning mix
• ¾ cup oatmeal
• ¾ cup water

Mix all ingredients. Bake in a 9X9 inch pan for 1¼ hours at 350.

And... the end. Seriously, that concludes the directions. After a quick trip to the grocery store for some (or all) of these ingredients -- stop judging, our fridge was very empty -- I threw this together, stuck it in the oven, and watched Oprah. Oh, er, that's right, before that I also made

Pastel Pasta Sauce Which Has Received International Acclaim

• 1 Jar Ragu Alfredo sauce
• 1 Jar Barilla Marinara sauce

Mix sauces in a saucepan over medium heat until warm. Serve over hot pasta.

Yeah... that was exhausting. I think I might have missed half an Oprah segment while whipping this up. PP's pink sauce is really amazingly good despite being so easy. Cooked the pasta and may have missed another half segment of Oprah. I am DEDICATED, people.

Once Ramon got home from work, we broke in one of our new wedding gifts from my BFF (thank you!). She and I had gone gift shopping & discussed my love for the entire Lenox Chirp collection, and the fact that SOMEONE was not a fan of the frou-frou birdie plates when I pointed them out as we registered. Still, our casual, mix-and-match Noritake raspberry place settings plus our Quadro set from Target look just as lovely with our new gorgeous runner (color is way more fab in person). And in my head I pretend we do have the frou-frou birdie plates, and I name each birdie.

We both enjoyed each of these recipes. The meat loaf looked a little unappetizing coming out of the oven. For some reason, some of the water and spices kinda... pooled up at the top and looked gross. I got rid of most of that and then cut around this weirdness when plating our meals. The meat loaf tasted good so long as I didn't think about how it had looked! Ramon is a big carnivore and he really loved it. It was really juicy and melted in your mouth. I used extra lean beef so it was fairly healthy.

The sauce was divine and so easy. I cooked whole wheat pasta just a little softer than al dente and tossed it in the sauce. Scrumptious.

We dug in before I had a chance to take a photo.

I know you're waiting with bated breath to hear about my third recipe of the night. Well, dear friends, that story is for another day. Turns out it needed to set for 4 to 6 hours before serving (who reads recipes ahead of time?), which it is doing now, so I'll report later (tonight? in a month? who knows) on the results of my mysterious dessert. Aren't you intrigued?