Dinner ... Facebook inspired

I was trolling Facebook the other day, and one of my friends "liked" a post that featured a recipe. I checked and it out and thought it looked tasty. The recipe was posted by the page Country Style, which posts all things country. Go figure. Now, I have to read every recipe VERY closely. Why? My husband has to be about the pickiest eater out there. The list of foods he does eat is 100x shorter than foods he doesn't eat. Most of the time I can omit ingredients not to his liking, but that gets to be a pain and most of the time makes the dish tasteless. So cooking for my dear husband can be quite an ordeal. And to make matters worse? Monkey see, monkey do. That's right, my darling daughter doesn't "like" all of the foods her dad likes. So now, it has turned in to two versus me. It's a loose loose situation. Have I gotten off track? Back to the point, the recipe posted by Country Style all called for ingredients my husband WOULD eat. I got so excited that I promptly shared it and tagged him in the post. So while at the grocery store this morning I picked up all the ingredients to make it for dinner tonight. When dinner came, I pulled up my husband's Facebook profile (he never posts anything to his wall, so finding it on his wall was easier than trying to find it on mine) and got to work. 

(Note, I just spent a good three minutes trolling Country Style's page instead of going straight to my husband's wall to grab it. Duh)

Recipe Link

Crispy Cheddar Chicken

2 lbs chicken tenders or 4 large chicken breasts 

2 sleeves Ritz crackers

1/4 teaspoons salt

1/8 teaspoon pepper 

1/2 cup whole milk 

3 cups cheddar cheese, grated

1 teaspoon dried parsley 

Sauce:

1 10 ounce can cream of chicken soup

2 tablespoon sour cream

2 tablespoon butter

Crush crackers. If using chicken breasts and not tenders, cut each chicken breast into 3 large pieces. Pour the milk, cheese and cracker crumbs into 3 separate small pans. Toss the salt and pepper into the cracker crumbs and stir the mixture around to combine. Dip each piece of chicken into the milk and then the cheese. Press the cheese into the chicken with your fingers. Then press the cheesy coated chicken into the cracker crumbs and press it in. 

Spray a 9×13 pan with cooking spray and lay the chicken inside the pan. Sprinkle the dried parsley over the chicken. Cover the pan with tin foil and bake at 400 degrees for 35 minutes. Remove the tin foil, bake for an additional 10-15 minutes, or until the edges of the chicken are golden brown and crispy. 

In a medium sized sauce pan combine the cream of chicken soup, sour cream and butter with a whisk. Stir it over medium high heat until the sauce is nice and hot. Serve over the chicken.

Steps. Lots of steps. That was the only thing going through my mind as I was preparing the chicken to bake. So. Many. Steps. I am not a steps kind of person. But after all the chicken was dredged, it looked like this (excuse the awesome cell phone picture): 

Looks pretty tasty! So in to the oven they went. Waiting for them to bake wasn't too bad. I trolled, what else, Facebook and clobbered my husband on Mini Golf. When the final timer went off I returned to the kitchen and started to plate. This is what I learned: I thought I had sprayed the tinfoil with enough nonstick spray to keep the chicken from sticking. Apparently not. My husband was quite entertained as he stood there watching me try and extract the chicken from the pan. So, lesson? Spray that sucker down. Or don't use tinfoil. Either will work I think. Next: The gravy was eh. I was a little skeptical when I saw it was Cream of Chicken undiluted soup, sour cream, and butter. Sounded like an artery clogger in a sauce pan. So I put the "gravy" in a separate bowl, just in case. Truth be told, it wasn't bad, but you don't really need it. 

Along with the chicken I nuked some frozen broccoli (steamables) and had some baked potatoes. (Yes, those are facos - I will never claim to be the healthiest eater - they are truly - an enigma)

All in all, the recipe wasn't too bad. I will deffinately make this in the future, on a day when steps aren't going to annoy me. I will also omit the "gravy". It didn't enhance the chicken exponentially and make me say, "WOW! This gravy really makes the chicken!" But I give it a 7.5 star out of 10 rating. Not my favorite, but my husband and kid liked it, so it's a semi-winner. 

I should also note that baking potatoes is my kryptonite. I never know how long I should bake potatoes or at what temperature. It's always a guessing game and one I'm not very good at. But, most of the time they are edible, after a few minutes in the microwave.