I made the mistake of promising my friends food.
As most everyone dealing with teenagers and perpetual-children in their twenties can tell you, that is a rookie mistake.
The original event that we were planning on celebrating was my friend Shelby’s first roller derby event.
I, thinking of my food blog, suggested everyone come over after and I would cook something for them. They quickly weighed the pros and cons of doing so (pro: food, con: Sarah’s cooking, pro: food?, con: but Sarah?, pro: but food.) and came to the conclusion that they would be willing to risk food poisoning so long as they got it for free.
However, a small series of things went slightly wrong leading up to the actual process of cooking and consuming.
First off, I was slammed by papers and exams the week before the derby, leaving me little time to bathe (unless we count scrubbing off in the fountain between classes, which I do, but you might not), let alone plan out a meal for an event that was way, way off in the distant future of Saturday. Therefore, I had no recipe, ingredients, or preparation of any kind prepared by derby day.
Second, I had been led to believe that the derby was very local to me and, knowing that my friends were grabbing me from my college apartment at 5:30, I figured we would be back at my place by around 8.
This was very much not the case.
The venue was an hour away from my apartment in the opposite direction that my friends had just come from and the event would finish around 10, getting us home to an apartment without basic cooking ingredients by 11 or later for a dinner I had no plan for.
Given these facts, I figured we would be calling the dinner off, but nothing can get in the way of semi-independent young adults and the prospect of someone cooking for you, so dinner was still on.
Luckily, I had brought an adorable cookbook with me that a classmate had lent me after hearing about this blog.
So, the new challenge became finding something that wouldn’t take 3 hours to cook, which led us to the Chicken and Rice Casserole.
I am very familiar with this dish– it was a staple in my home growing up, disgustingly called Chicken and Goop (I think I inherited my comedic cooking skill from my mother). After gathering everything I needed during a quick Kroger pitstop and finishing the hour long trek back to my apartment with some choice music, we were ready. (It was past midnight. Shout out to my roommate for putting up with me.)
(It was past midnight. Shout out to my roommate for putting up with me.)
Also pictured: Twizzlers, KitKats, some cornbread, and a Hot Wheels car. While these are not necessary for the dish, they can certainly add a touch of creativity.
INGREDIENTS ACCORDING TO BOOK, yields 4 servings:
2 cups cooked rice
2 cups cooked chicken
1 stalk celery
1 can (10.5 ounces) of cream of mushroom soup
½ soup can of milk
INGREDIENTS ACCORDING TO SARAH
Some rice? (My packet had directions for how to make 3 cups of cooked rice so that’s what you get and you will like it.)
3 fairly large chicken breasts (maybe more would have been good; I really like meat)
2 stalks celery (I don’t play by the rules)
1 can (10.5 ounces) of cream of mushroom soup (Sometimes I do play by the rules)
½ soup can of milk
The longest part of the preparation for me was cooking the rice, (I wasn’t using instant rice) so if you’re in the same boat, make sure to start that first and cook it before you move to preparing the chicken.
Somehow I messed up the rice– it was simultaneously undercooked and goopy yet still burning at the bottom of the pan?? A mystery for another day, to be sure.
For the chicken: the book recommends baking the chicken for an hour, but I didn’t have that much time. My guests were dropping like flies (seen on right). 
Instead, I washed the chicken and sliced it into strips and threw it into a skillet to cook with some salt and pepper.
Pro tip! Cut the pieces of chicken in half to make sure it’s cooked all the way through. Poisoning your house guests is for professionals only and we need to work our way up to that.
While the rice and chicken cook, slice the celery. Then, get bored and slice some more because standing there and waiting for rice to cook is terrible.
Now that your chicken and celery are cooked, time to mix it all together! Sarah tip: I think it would have been much easier if I had mixed the celery, soup, and milk into the rice in its pan before putting it in the casserole pan with the chicken. Maybe try that.
And 1-2-3 a casserole..! … Concoction..
… UgH.
This has got to be the most unappetizing pile of goop in the world. It looks like I mixed up garbage. Literal trash. And I was expecting others to consume it. Unbelievable.
Anyway, now all that’s left is to cook it all together for half an hour at 350*F.
… OR.
Now, hear me out; it was now one AM and we were tired and very hungry and some of us had work in the morning and a long drive home still.
So, in the interest of time, I threw it into a microwave safe dish and nuked it for five minutes.
Ta-da!
You have now made a semi-passable casserole! You have fed your friends! You are an adult! You are having dinner at one in the morning on the floor! Hooray!
Review from Alex: “I will not eat this.”
Today’s lesson: Do not get in the way of children in their early twenties and the promise of home cooked food. They cannot be reasoned with.
culinary catastrophes 