Craving That Delicious Chicken Dish

Jan here, and the countdown is on. Three weeks and two days from now some nice men (who we'll be paying) will come to our house and start putting our stuff in their truck...whether we're ready or not...and haul it off to a storage unit that we're renting for a month before they come back and take it to our new house.

I won't be able to get enough of this view. I don't
think we'll ever close the curtains!

Does that sound complicated? You have no idea! But I'll give you week by week updates as we go!

Meanwhile, like I said last week, we're eating out of our pantry, trying to lessen the amount of stuff we need to move...but that can get a little "ho hum." And then this week the craving hit. I just had to have that delicious chicken dish commonly called "Crack Chicken."

I had the chicken in the freezer, and some ranch salad dressing in the pantry, and some cream cheese in the fridge... a quick trip to the grocery store for some bacon, and we were in business.



Jan's Semi-Cracked Chicken

ingredients:

2 - 3 chicken breasts, partially frozen
1/2 bottle Ranch salad dressing
5 slices bacon, cooked (I bought the pre-cooked kind)
8 oz. cream cheese

This was an easy-peasy recipe! Pre-heat your oven to 375°.

First, I cut the chicken breasts into cubes (much easier to do when they're partially frozen - mine had been thawing in the refrigerator for about 24 hours.) I thought about browning the chicken first, but I was short on time. So I just dumped them into a greased 9" x 13" baking dish.

(The next time I'll brown the chicken pieces first. This batch was a little heavy on the fat from the chicken.)

Next, cut the bacon into pieces and scatter them over your chicken.

Third, pour the ranch dressing over the whole thing.

Bake uncovered for 45 minutes at 375°.

When you get close to the end of the cooking time, cube your cream cheese. After 45 minutes, take the casserole out of the oven and distribute the cream cheese cubes evenly over the chicken.

It smells great already, doesn't it?

Bake for another 5 minutes or so, until the cream cheese is soft. Remove the casserole from the oven and stir everything together.

Note: this would work better in a mixing bowl. My bowls are already packed, except the one my son is still using...

I served the chicken over pasta for hubby and son, and ate mine all by itself. When I make it again this week, I'm going to cook some zucchini noodles to have with it.

Was it good? Well, there were no leftovers and no complaints!

What else did we do this week?

This mess is our garage on Friday night before our Saturday morning garage sale (or rummage, as they call it around here.) On Saturday morning we hauled all this stuff out into the driveway and got rid of it! We put ridiculously low prices on everything...we really didn't want to move it. The new place is a condo, so no yard work in our future, and no outside house maintenance.

I know, I know. Sometimes I'll miss mowing the lawn. But I still get to have a flower garden and other plants. And the big win? More time for hiking in the Hills and writing!

But the big downside to this moving business is that we haven't been able to go hiking yet this year. Maybe we'll take a day off soon and head into these beautiful mountains!

Jan Drexler spent her childhood dreaming of living in the Wild West and is now thrilled to call the Black Hills of South Dakota her home. When she isn’t writing she spends much of her time satisfying her cross-stitch addiction or hiking and enjoying the Black Hills with her husband of more than thirty-six years.