Meal #1

Me: "Kelly, would you like to come over for dinner tonight? I just put the food into the crockpot and I'm thinking that now it will be done in time for dinner."

Kelly: "Well, what are you preparing?"

Me: "I think that that doesn't matter since a free meal is a free meal."

Kelly: "Well, it does matter."

Me: "In what way?"

Kelly: "In the way that I need to know if I should stop on the way to your house and get myself something to eat."

Madison: "Oh, Kelly, bring me something too!"

Thus began my first foray into tastyplanner.com. It started out wrong with me falling asleep when I should have been putting the ingredients into the crockpot. Then I read that the meal only needed to cook on low for 4 hours. In my crockpot cooking time is half the time the recipe calls for. I don't know why. Every crockpot I have ever had cooks so much faster than it should, but now that I'm aware of it and am use to it I love it. Because after waking up from my nap and picking up Madison it was 3:00 PM, but since I only needed 2 hours of crockpot cooking I knew all was good. That was until I had the above conversation.

The recipe was for Italian Chicken. The ingredients were simple: 2 or 3 chicken breasts, 4 cups of chicken broth, 1/4 oz. cream cheese, 1 package of italian season dressing, 2 tbs. cornstarch. I was suppose to mix the broth and cornstarch and pour into the crockpot. Sounded great only I didn't have cornstarch. It was missing. Gone. Finito. This is the kind of nonsense that happens to me when cooking. But I refused to panic. Well, I might have a tad and then I goggled, "cornstarch substitute" and found that I could use 4 tbs. of flour. I whisked it together in a bowl, but this is one of those things that never blends when I do it. Ever. Kelly use to have me put it in a blender when I made her famous Chicken Enchiladas, but my blender is old, and I never use it and it is stored somewhere in my garage that is hard to get to so I whisked it as best as I could and poured it into the crockpot.

Next I cut up the cream cheese and put it into the mixture and then put in the chicken breasts, adding the packet of italian season dressing. Cover and cook on low for 4 hours. I covered and cooked on high for 6 hours which is really 3 hours in my crockpot. After three hours I looked in the pot and saw that the flour had risen to the top and was floating in itty bitty pieces and the mixture had not thickened at all. I whined. This is the part of cooking where I fall apart and whine and cry about not knowing what to do. This is the part of cooking I hate. Why can't it just work out? I tried whisking it again and it seemed to blend better so I took out the chicken and whisked til the cows came home. Madison and I tasted it and thought it needed some more cream cheese so we cut up the other 4 oz. and added it. Madison thought it needed another packet of italian seasoning and we added 1/2 a packet. Madison whisked it some more and I upped the cooking temperature and decided to wait for Kelly to come in to save the day.

Which she did. She went home and got some cornstarch (and a bottle of coconut rum, but that was a needed side ingredient not for the chicken dish) and added that. The higher temperature began working and the gravy thickened. We had the chicken and gravy over rice or noodles as we made both. We also had green beans and biscuits. The meal was deemed delicious, four stars out of five, and one to keep in the recipe box.

And Kelly had seconds!