Abby's Mexican Casserole

Today I decided to cook.  This is really the first time that I have cooked since we moved here.  When I say cook I mean looked up a recipe and made something new.  I usually make spaghetti or stroganoff.  Something easy.  One main reason I have not been cooking here is that the recipes I am used to involve ingredients I cannot get here in Moscow, particularly Rotel.  I have learned I rely on rotel way too much.  So here I am venturing into something new in my tiny kitchen.

The first thing I did was go onto Pinterest and look through all the recipes I have been pinning thinking someday I will make these and they are not just on here for looks.  Well that someday came.  I had to think about the ingredients I had on hand.  There is no running to the store to get what I need.  The market is not far but there is a good chance it will not have what I want and I did not want to have to bundle Owen and myself to go check.  Yes that would be laziness!  After looking through all the pins I decided on Paula Deen's Mexican Chicken Casserole.  I knew I didn't have all the ingredients but figured I could substitute a bit here and there.  This is a scary thought for me.  I am one to follow the directions when cooking step by step and I am definitely not knowledgeable enough to know what to sub in.  And then to top it off I am messing with Paula Deen's recipe.  But here I go anyway.  (Disclaimer:  for anybody reading this, I followed the recipe exactly and did not substitute.  David gets a bit scared when I cook in the first place so as he is concerned I followed Paula Deen.)

Here is the original recipe:
http://www.pauladeen.com/recipes/recipe_view/mexican_chicken/

Servings: 8 servings 
Prep Time: 10 min
Cook Time: 30 min
Difficulty: Easy

Ingredients Add to grocery list

1 10 3/4 -ounce can cream of chicken soup
1 10 3/4 -ounce can cheddar cheese soup
1 10 3/4 -ounce can cream of mushroom soup
1 10-ounce can tomatoes
1 whole chicken, cooked, boned, and chopped or 4 cups leftover cooked chicken
11 1/2-ounce package flour tortillas
2 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl, stir together the three kinds of soup and the tomatoes. Stir in the chicken.

In a greased 13 x 9- inch pan, layer the tortillas and the chicken mixture, beginning and ending with tortillas. Sprinkle the cheese over the casserole and bake for 30 minutes.

Here is what I actually used:

1 can of cream of celery (no cream of ckn here)

1 can of cheddar cheese soup

1 can of kidney beans

Almost a whole box of chopped tomatoes

1 package of taco seasoning

chicken

tortillas

sliced gouda cheese

Now I am sure after you read my list of ingredients you have to think this is the most disgusting dish ever.  Oh but it was quite yummy.  I thought I had cream of mushroom but did not so I decided to add kidney beans.  Because we all know kidney beans and cream of mushroom soup are the same thing.  The food was lacking a bit of flavor so before I added the tomatoes I thought long and hard about using one of my precious cans of rotel, but as I am hoarding them for cheese dip and tacos I decided against it.  So instead I went forward with the chopped tomatoes and added a package of taco seasoning.  This seemed to do the trick.  But mind you for all the people in the US, particularly in the south, rotel would have been all that you needed.  After boiling my chicken and stirring it all together I added it to the casserole dish as instructed.  I did debate about using tortilla chips instead.  I did not but will next time.  It was hard for us to cut the tortilla.  I did not have cheddar cheese and since I am saving the velveeta for cheese dip I decided to use my gouda cheese slices.  Yes I am sure you think this could not possibly be good but I have substituted gouda for many things here and it worked.  

So all in all I can say that I probably created my own dish and Paula Deen was just an inspiration.  So I guess now I can call this Abby's Mexican Casserole.  Of course it will never be repinned or reused because if you go by reading alone you would never add these ingredients.  But taste is the key.  So trust me it was good.  And David liked it too.  Which is all the test, because he does not always (most of the time) like what I cook.  So cheers to me for a job well done!  And it turns out that Owen likes kidney beans.  So I guess I will be buying more.  Now if I can only remember which market I bought them in.  Hmmmm.