Cheese Chicken Spaghetti — The Casserole That Brought Us Back Together

Ryan is home. For good this time. Deployment over. Seven months, three weeks, and four days. Done. He walked through the apartment door on Tuesday afternoon. Caleb was in my arms. The apartment smelled like chicken and rice casserole because I made it for his homecoming — the first meal in this kitchen, the last meal before every departure, the only meal that made sense for this return. Ryan dropped his bag (the green bag, the bag I hate, the bag I want to throw in the ocean) and stood there and looked at us — me and Caleb, his wife and his son, in the apartment he left twice — and I watched seven months of deployment dissolve off his shoulders like water. He held Caleb. Not the careful, first-time hold from the hospital. A HOLD. A real, full, this-is-my-son hold. Caleb looked at him with those huge blue eyes and Ryan said, 'Hey, buddy. I'm your dad. I'm home.' I went to the base clinic Thursday. I told the counselor — a military family counselor named Dr. Reyes — everything. The 4 PM emptiness. The crying jags. The inability to feel joy even when I should. The fear that I'm not enough, that I'm failing, that Abernathy women are supposed to be stronger than this. Dr. Reyes said, 'Strength has nothing to do with it. Postpartum depression is chemistry, not character.' She said I should come weekly. She said it's treatable. She said I'm not failing. 'You recognized it,' she said. 'You made an appointment. You came. That's not failure. That's the opposite.' I haven't told Ryan yet. Or Mom. I told Jen, and I told Dr. Reyes, and for now that's enough. I'll tell them when I'm ready. When I have the words. Ryan ate three helpings of the casserole. He sat at the table where I sat alone for seven months and he ate my food in my kitchen and the silence was gone. Replaced by forks and chewing and Caleb making baby noises in the bouncer and Ryan saying, 'This is the best thing I've ever eaten, Rach.' It's the same casserole. The same recipe card. But it tastes different when there are two forks instead of one. The deployment is over. The treatment has begun. The casserole is warm. We're home. All three of us. We're home.

I don’t have a chicken rice casserole recipe card written in my own handwriting — it came from Ryan’s mom on an index card with a grease stain in the corner, and over the years I’ve drifted into my own version, the one that uses spaghetti instead of rice and two kinds of cheese because that’s what I had the first time I made it in this apartment. This Cheese Chicken Spaghetti is what was in the oven when Ryan walked through the door on Tuesday — the same casserole I made the night before his first deployment, the same one I made alone on a Tuesday in January when Caleb was two weeks old and I needed something to fill the kitchen with warmth. It’s the dish that means we’re still here, and now, finally, it means we’re all here together.

Cheese Chicken Spaghetti

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 40 min | Total Time: 1 hr | Servings: 8

Ingredients

• 12 oz spaghetti, broken into thirds
• 3 cups cooked chicken, shredded or cubed
• 1 can (10.5 oz) condensed cream of mushroom soup
• 1 can (10.5 oz) condensed cream of chicken soup
• 1 cup chicken broth
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1/2 cup diced green bell pepper
• 1/2 cup diced onion
• 1 can (10 oz) diced tomatoes with green chiles, drained
• 2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese, divided
• 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• Salt to taste

Instructions

1. Preheat and prep. Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a 9x13-inch baking dish and set aside.
2. Cook the spaghetti. Boil spaghetti in salted water according to package directions until just al dente. Drain and set aside — do not overcook, as it will continue to cook in the oven.
3. Build the sauce. In a large bowl, whisk together cream of mushroom soup, cream of chicken soup, chicken broth, and sour cream until smooth. Stir in diced bell pepper, onion, drained tomatoes with chiles, garlic powder, and black pepper.
4. Combine. Add the cooked spaghetti and shredded chicken to the sauce mixture. Stir in 1 cup of the cheddar cheese and all of the mozzarella. Taste and adjust salt as needed.
5. Transfer and top. Pour the mixture into the prepared baking dish and spread evenly. Sprinkle the remaining 1 cup of cheddar cheese over the top.
6. Bake. Bake uncovered at 350°F for 35–40 minutes, until the casserole is bubbling at the edges and the cheese on top is golden and melted.
7. Rest and serve. Let the casserole rest for 5 minutes before serving. It holds well and tastes just as good reheated the next day.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 480 | Protein: 32g | Fat: 21g | Carbs: 38g | Fiber: 2g | Sodium: 820mg