Saturday Sample - A Recipe!

Way back in 1985 when I edited a newsletter for writers, I solicited recipes from my contributors for a short cookbook pamphlet. I ended up with thirty-one quick and easy recipes, and touted it as "One new thing to eat a day for a month." Yeah, that's awkwardly put. The idea was that a writer could have something on the table for dinner even after writing all day long. I called the booklet Rapid Recipes for Writers...and Other Busy People.

I didn't vet the recipes for calorie content, break down the nutritional elements, or otherwise make claims for wholesome goodness. They were simply tasty, quick recipes.

A couple of days ago I wanted to cook up the package of chicken thighs that had been sitting in my fridge nearly too long, so I tried to remember one of the recipes that I had collected during the two years I lived in South America. There's nothing Hispanic about the recipe. It came from an Anglo. However, it was a very tasty chicken recipe that I have made numerous times for my husband and children.

I didn't take the time to pull out the recipe from the cookbook, which I revamped and published as a free electronic book back in 2010.

I just improvised, changing a key ingredient to a similar one. The chicken turned out to be delicious, and the rice even more so.

As a special treat, my Sample this Saturday is the original recipe--which I can't even make anymore, due to my severe mushroom allergy. I used cream of chicken soup in my chicken cook-up this week, and it worked just as brilliantly.
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SUNDAY SCHOOL CHICKEN*
Helen Milligan

Mix:
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 can chicken gumbo soup
1 can water
1 cup rice

Place in bottom of 9x13-inch pan. Sprinkle 2/3 of a package of onion soup mix over mixture.

Lay one cut-up chicken over soup mixture, skin side down. Sprinkle remaining soup mix over chicken. Cover with foil. Bake at 350 degrees F. for 2 hours**, while you go to Sunday School or on a shopping trip, or finish another chapter of your novel!
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Rapid Recipes for Writers...And Other Busy People is available FREE at Amazon, Smashwords, and other retailers of ebooks.

* The original name of this recipe is "Relief Society Chicken," after the name of the ladies auxiliary in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Once upon a time, the Relief Society held "work meetings" on a weekday, where the women would gather to quilt, make crafts, or otherwise learn home skills. I changed the name for the cookbook, in an attempt to make it a bit more universal, at least to Christians and those familiar with the Sunday School concept.

** If I need a three-hour stretch of time for the recipe to bake, I turn the temperature down to 300 degrees F.