My recipe for today is a family favorite.  By family favorite, I mean my entire mother’s side of the family.  I don’t know who developed this recipe or when we started eating it but you can’t pry our fingers away from a pot when it has been cooked.  Normally you have to make 2 batches for us crazy people – 1 to eat immediately and 1 to freeze.

When my grandmother was sick, we use to joke with her that this recipe had special healing powers.  She would go in once a month to have her chemo treatment.  She always picked the first Sunday of the month.  She would feel terrible the rest of Sunday and through Tuesday.  Wednesday was my day off at the time other than Sunday so I would always go over to visit on both of those days.  On chemo week, my mother and I would gather all of the ingredients for this recipe and get to work in her kitchen while she rested and then when it was done we’d bring her a big bowl and she would start feeling better.   I don’t think this recipe really has healing powers but she always knew once she had chicken spaghetti she would be on the upswing the rest of the month.  I guess it was just a small thing to look forward to.

Chicken Spaghetti

• chicken (you can use anywhere from 1 breast to a 1.25 lb of chicken breasts)
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 stick oleo or butter (you can cut this or eliminate it – I normally eliminate)
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 can tomato soup
• 1 can died rotel (regular or mild)
• 1 pound of Velveeta Cheese (look for the light or 2% package)
• 1 package of vermicelli noodles

1. Boil chicken with 1 bay leaf until cooked (~30 to 45 mins). Let cool
2. Saute onion in butter in an oven safe soup or stock pot
3. Shred your chicken into small pieces
4. Add Can of Tomato soup and can of Rotel into onion pot.  Stir until mixed.
5. Start boiling your noodles.  Boil in same water that chicken was boiled in to add flavor
6. Chop your Velveeta cheese into small chunks.  Start adding to soupy mix.  Stir until melted.  Add more, Stir.  Repeat until all cheese has been incorporated and is fully melted (very important!!)
7. Add in Chicken to mixture.
8. Drain noodles.
9. Add cooked noodles into cheesy chicken mixture and mix very well.  Make sure all noodles are coated and mixture is throughout the mass of noodles.
10. Bake in oven at 350 degrees until the mixture bubbles.  Normally this is 10-15 minutes.  Not very long at all

I don’t have all the nutritional information on this recipe but if you stick with a 1 cup serving it is 6 Weight Watcher points.  This recipe makes 6-8 servings depending on how big your 1 cup serving is.

Anywho, my grandmother was battling cancer and my mother and I were over visiting and she decided she wanted to make this soup.  I remember being in the kitchen with her and my mother in the living room watching tv and hearing my mom yell out to us not to make it too spicy.  See my grandmother and I liked “taste” or seasoning, including spice, and my mother did not.  We had already doubled the amount of hot velveeta and cut back on the plain velveeta so there was no helping my mother out.  I think my grandmother and I ate that entire pot of soup…

Broccoli Soup

• 1 can 98% fat free cream of chicken soup
• 1 can 98% fat free cream of celery soup
• 1 can 98% fat free cream of mushroom (or another veggie) soup
• 1/2 stick oleo
• 1 onion, diced
• 1/2 stick velveeta cheese, plain (basically 1/2 of a 16oz package – look for the low fat or 2%)
• 1/4 stick velveeta cheese, hot/mexican
• 3 cans of milk
• 1 head of Broccoli – steamed, drained, and chopped

Saute onion in soup/stock pot.  Add in milk and all 3 cans of soup.  Cut the cheeses into small squares and slowly add to soup pot.  Stir until melted before adding in the next group.  Mix in Broccoli.  Heat until all cheese is melted and everything has blended together and heated through.  Serve with ranch flavored oyster crackers.*

*Ranch flavored oyster crackers are basically oyster crackers that have been seasoned with the Hidden Valley Ranch dressing mix.  I believe that my grandmother would coat them and then bake for 30 minutes just to toast up the crackers and let some seasoning set in.

I know when I set out to share recipes on this site I said I wanted to keep them healthy and Weight Watcher friendly.  Unfortunately, not everything can be healthified or made to be WW friendly and you can’t deny yourself of everything.  Especially not this week’s recipe.

I first had this recipe in college.  I was living in the dorms and on my own food wise as the meal plans (and food) was horrible.  My grandmother got wind of this and started making food and freezing it for me so I wouldn’t starve.  Often times she just made a recipe up from her head and it wasn’t anything fancy but boy was it good and I was happy.  This recipe never really had an official name.  Sometimes it was Taco Pie and other times it was Frito Pie.  Tasted the same either way.  It works well frozen and defrosted and your kids will love it.  Just don’t expect it to be the healthiest thing.  Also, since it is a made up recipe and I never got to cook it with her, the measurements are approximations.

Taco/Frito Pie

• 1 bag of Fritos, crushed
• 1 pound of lean ground beef
• 1 can of turkey chili
• 1 can of beans, Texas Style
• cheddar cheese
• 1/2 can cream style corn
• 1 box Jiffy Corn Bread Mix

Begin by browning the ground beef.  Next puree that can of beans.  Grab an oven-friendly casserole dish and start layering.  There is no measurements to your layer.  Just make sure you can spread a thin (or thick) layer across the dish before moving onto the next layer.  Layers are: Fritos, chili, meat, beans, then cheese.  She normally did 3 layers but 2 would be fine as well.  For the topping make the Jiffy Corn Bread batter following the box directions*.  Mix in a half can of cream style corn.  Pour batter on top of your layered dish and then place in oven.  Bake until the topping is brown (follow Jiffy directions for oven temperature).

* Jiffy mix can be infested with weevils so make sure to buy it the day you make it and sift through it first.