Have a Sprite and a Smile

Today was a scramble to make dinner. Actually it was yesterday that was a scramble but I fell asleep and didn't wake up until it was too late to fix dinner. But I was determined to get it right today. I had a pack of chicken, what to do?

I started scanning some of my old keepers and settled on Chicken Casserole with Sprite. Yes, Sprite. There was a can in the fridge. I'm not sure where it came from since we only drink diet in our house, probably from my father-in-law. But it was there waiting to be used.

You're probably still stumped on the Sprite part. I have the Classic Cooking With Coca-Cola book. It's rather interesting and I tried this recipe once before and it was decent, worth keeping.

The problem was the ingredient list. I didn't have cream of celery soup, but I had cream of mushroom. I didn't have 16 ounces of Sprite, just a 12 ounce can. But last time the casserole was on the soupy side, so I thought a 12 ounce can would probably be an improvement. I also didn't have 6 ounce box of long grain wild rice, so I used Texmati brown rice. By the way 6 ounces of rice equals one cup. I had a can of cut green beans but as I noted before I didn't think French cut was that important. But I drained the can this time since, as I mentioned, the casserole was soupy last time. I had no pimentos on hand, so I just skipped them. Nor did I have a can of water chestnuts but they've always reminded me a little of raw potatoes. So I took a large red potato, quartered it and and sliced it thin. I thought some French fried onions on top would be a nice touch but I couldn't find any so I took my advice from last time and covered the top with cheese.

So how about that, a completely different casserole! It came out rather good, except, the rice didn't cook through. It took my brain a moment to register how the slivered almonds got in there until I realized it was the rice. That's probably the difference in using "real" rice versus Uncle Ben's. The potatoes were just barely done but then again they were supposed to emulate water chestnuts, so that was fine. I probably should have used a shallow casserole dish instead of a deep casserole dish to get a better cheese to casserole ratio. Next time. I think French fried onions would have been better than the cheese but the cheese was better than not. I'll probably keep the portion of casserole that's covered with cheese and give the rest to the feral cats. I've come to enjoy that ;)