For many, many years, Dave has had responsibilities at church on Easter morning, helping with the music for the services. Which means we don’t travel on this holiday to visit family. Instead, we stay in town and it has become a friend holiday. We started a tradition years ago to ask around to see if there are people without a table to join for the holiday, and invite them to ours. It has been interesting to see who comes and what the mix of people is. It is sometimes full of college students, sometimes not. Some years, people know each other, other years it is a mish-mash of our worlds colliding. But the food is always yummy and it feels like a special celebration.
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| Water chestnut rice |
It is a great dish, and you can alter it as you like. I remember her often serving it with Water Chestnut Rice – which could be called Party Rice, in my opinion. The Rice is actually my very favorite part of the dish! It’s a savory, moist, highly flavorful rice pilaf with a crunch of water chestnuts. My mom got the rice recipe from a friend during the same era in which she got the Party Chicken recipe. She said she had it at a friend’s house for dinner one night. The host gave a disclaimer that the first time her husband had it, he said, “he liked it, but the potatoes in it weren’t cooked!” There are no potatoes in this dish…. it was the water chestnuts. Mom wrote down the recipe and has been making it ever since. She even made large quantities of it for groups when she was doing food service for her church, altering it a little to simplify it.
Party Chicken
6 chicken breasts (pounded until uniform thickness)
12 slices dried beef (canned)
3 slices of bacon (to be cut in half)
1 (10 oz.) can cream of mushroom soup
1 cup (8 oz) sour cream
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| the can of dried beef and the cool jar you get to keep- see above as a vase for a daisy! |
A handful of slivered almonds
Place individual slices of dried beef side by side in baking pan.
Flatten chicken breast, place a slice of dried beef in “rough” side of chicken and roll up.
Place 1/2 slice bacon around outside of roll and place seam side down in pan.
Place a rolled breast on each piece
of dried beef. (All of this can be prepared ahead and refrigerated or frozen). When ready to bake, add combined soup and sour cream and pour over each breast.
This will seem thick, but the juices from the chicken will dilute it. Bake at 350 for 1 hour OR 250 for 3 hours (if you want to slow-cook it). Add almonds on top and bake an additional 10 minutes or until toasted.
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| done! |
5 Tbsp. butter
1 onion, chopped finely
1/2 cup canned mushrooms, drained and sliced
8 oz. can water chestnuts, chopped
1 cup white rice, uncooked1 envelope dry onion soup mix
2 cups water
1 tsp salt
Melt butter in casserole. Add all other ingredients. Gently stir together. Cover and cook 1 hour at 350 degrees, or until rice is completely cooked. (I have made this with brown rice and it works, it just takes much more time!
Also, it easily doubles or triples!)
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| Dinner time! |
Community Table 