What's on the Menu for Today?: CREAMY CHICKEN BAKE

Hi All! I hope this post finds you doing fabulous today. I bet you're surprised to be hearing from me again so soon. Well, don't be. You know that cooking is in my blood and so any spare moment that I can find, I'll be in the kitchen.

A few months ago, I was asked to come up with some dishes for the blog that were healthy and economical. Mind you, I'm not a nutritionist or an economist but I'll do the best I can. Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of cooking with chicken breast tenders so I thought I would concentrate on finding recipes for chicken. Of course, we all know that chicken is the most versatile protein and the leanest part of the chicken is the breast. The tenderloins are muscles located just under the breast muscles and because these muscles are less used, they tend to be more tender. As far as the economical part, anything referred to as a "tenderloin" would typically be more expensive but I bought a bag with about 35 to 40 tenderloins for about 6 bucks at Super Target. One serving is 4 oz, which is about 3 tenderloins so you do the math.

As for the healthy part, this recipe is advertised as having 300 calories per serving but it's actually less than that because I left off one key ingredient, which I'll tell you about in a minute. The dish that I have prepared for you today is a Creamy Chicken Bake and it is the quickest, easiest and one of the tastiest entrees I've ever prepared. For your grocery list, you only need 3 items: Chicken Tenderloins, 1 can of Cream of Chicken Soup and an 8 oz. container of sour cream.

Special Notes: I found this recipe on BetterCrocker.com and it is very similar to one of my mother's recipes that I prepared in an earlier post. The original recipe is called "Creamy Chicken and Ham Bake" but I omitted the ham and added fresh mushrooms instead. Ham tends to be salty and I didn't think that it made much sense to use a reduced-sodium soup and then turn around and add ham to the dish. I served mine atop a bed of yellow Saffron rice with some steamed broccoli and glazed carrots on the side. (FYI - always keep a package of Yellow Saffron rice on hand. It is so much more flavorful than just plain old rice.)

Final Thoughts: This is my new go-to meal whenever I need something quick and easy.

INGREDIENTS:
1 can (10 3/4 oz) condensed reduced-sodium
Cream of Chicken soup
1/2 cup light sour cream
1 lb chicken breast tenders (not breaded)
1 package (2.5 oz) thinly sliced smoked ham,
coarsely chopped (OPTIONAL)
1 teaspoon parsley flakes (OPTIONAL)

DIRECTIONS:
1. Heat oven to 325°F. Spray 11x7-inch (2-quart) glass baking dish with cooking spray. In a small bowl, mix the soup and sour cream. Arrange chicken in single layer in baking dish. (Top with ham if desired.) Spoon soup mixture evenly over the top.