Cranberry Chicken

I'm a big fan of easy. No, a HUGE fan. Easy is my best friend. Easy used to be my middle name!

(sorry, Mom...)

So one of my favorite cookbooks ever is Campbell's Weeknight Cooking. It's essentially a book filled with recipes that require a can of condensed soup (varied flavors!) and a pound of meat (several different animals are harmed in the making of these meals!). Occasionally you have to add some vegetables, but that's ok, your mom keeps those in her crisper and will probably give you a couple for a hug or some help trying to figure out why her record player won't turn.

(joking, Mom!)

One of my favorites in the book is Cranberry Chicken. I don't know why. It's kind of autumnish, but I get a hankering for it more than 2 weeks out of the year (remember, we live in Louisiana! What fall?!) so I made it the other night. Only I was out of some stuff, but we'll get to that later.

Cranberry Chicken

1 tbsp vegetable oil
4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup (fat free!)
1/4 cup cranberry juice
1/4 cup orange juice
1 tbsp dried cranberries (unsweetened!)
1 tbsp chopped fresh sage or 1 tsp dried sage leaves, crushed
1/8 tsp black pepper (come on, you know how I feel about this)
hot cooked rice (brown!)
sliced green onions, optional (this is tricky, mom doesn't keep these in stock...)

Heat oil in a 10" skillet over medium-high heat. Add chicken and cook for 10 minutes or until it's well browned on both sides. Remove and set aside.

Stir in the soup, cranberry juice, orange juice, cranberries, sage and black pepper. Heat to a boil. Return chicken to the skillet and reduce heat to low. Cover and cook for 5 minutes or until chicken is cooked through.

Serve with rice and sprinkle with green onions.
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I have never actually made this recipe just like this. I always, always cut my chicken up into little pieces instead of just cooking the whole breast halves. I have no idea why I started out like that. Probably because I forgot to take it out of the freezer that morning and they were frozen solid. Who knows. I just know I like it better that way. I also end up adding extra cranberries, extra sage, some salt, and 2 cans of soup. Because I can.

So, I made this the other night only I didn't have some stuff. That morning I had foolishly strapped on 4" heels, thinking I would spend most of my day at my desk filing and working on the stacks of paper people keeping giving me. But then some customers came in and they decided that NO, I should get up and walk around. A lot. To show them things. In my heels. So I did! And then that afternoon I decided I wanted this meal, but I did NOT want to walk around the grocery store. I was done with walking.

For the first time in maybe my ENTIRE LIFE, I said "I will make this work."

I had no green onions, but that's not too big of a deal, so that didn't worry me. But I never have orange and cranberry juice, because I'm not the biggest fan. You know what I'm a fan of?

GRAPEFRUIT JUICE.

So I got out my 1/4 measuring cup and filled it half full of grapefruit juice and half with chicken broth to...well, I have no idea what I was thinking. That liquid chicken would cut the bitterness of grapefruit. In the pan it went. That takes care of one juice. What else do I have?

ORANGE GATORADE.

My husband is an athletic kinda guy, maybe even a jock, and he always has Gatorade. Thank you, Jesus, he bought orange. It's so...CRISP, though, isn't it? Ok, 1/8 cup of Gatorade, another 1/8 broth.

It totally worked. My Cranberry Gatorade Grapefruit Chicken was devoured and husband was non the wiser that there was a sports drink involved. I was pretty proud. A little ashamed. But mostly proud.