Chicken Dinner Ideas — The Running List I Keep at the Back of My Notebook

I turned fifteen on Wednesday, June 15, 2016, and I got my first real job on Thursday at the Sonic Drive-In on 71st Street, and I am writing this on Saturday morning at six-thirty before my first shift, with a cup of coffee on the table next to me and Mama snoring in the next room and the morning sun coming through the kitchen window onto the linoleum, and I want to put down on paper, today of all days, my running list of chicken dinner ideas.

I have been keeping this list at the back of my notebook for about four months. It started as a single page with five entries on it, and it now takes up six pages, and the entries are arranged by cost-per-serving and labeled with a star next to the ones I have actually made and a circle next to the ones I am still working up to. I want to give the list to you today, because today is the day I have decided to. Today is the day I went from a girl in a kitchen to a working girl who happens to also be in a kitchen. The list is part of how I got here.

I want to set the scene first. Wednesday morning Mama woke me up before her shift with a wrapped present on the foot of my bed. The present was a brand-new hardcover notebook, dark green, two hundred pages, college-ruled. She had bought it at Walmart three weeks before for $4.49 marked down from $9.99 and hidden it in her closet, and she had wrapped it in newspaper and tied it with twine, and she had written a card that said, Kaylee Dawn, you have outgrown your dollar-bin notebook. Use this one for the second half. Love, Mama. I cried in bed. She hugged me from the side. She left for work. I have not stopped looking at the green notebook on the kitchen table since.

Wednesday afternoon, Mama brought home a marked-down sheet cake from the Walmart bakery — the corner was crushed, one of the H’s in Happy Birthday was smudged, the bakery had taken it from $14.99 to $5.99 — and the two of us sat at the kitchen table and ate two slices each. The cake was vanilla with pink frosting roses and the kind of decorated bakery sweetness that I do not normally let myself love because I have decided most baked things are better from scratch, but on Wednesday I let myself love it. It was my birthday. The cake was bought on purpose, with money that did not have to be spent, by my mama, who had walked into the bakery on her break and asked for whatever was on markdown and bought the cake home for me. I have decided that is the whole point of cake on a birthday.

Thursday afternoon at four o’clock I sat across the desk from Carlos Mendoza in the small back office at the Sonic, and he asked me about my work history, and he asked me about my school grades, and he asked me what I would do if a customer was angry about a wrong order. I told him I would apologize, fix the order, and ask the manager what to do next. He nodded once. He said, start Saturday at eleven, you’re hired. He handed me a packet for Mama to sign and a polo shirt with the Sonic logo and a paper hat. I walked out of the Sonic and I waited until the bus pulled away from the stop before I cried, and then I cried all the way home in the back row where nobody could see.

I have a job. I have a paycheck coming in two weeks. I have a green hardcover notebook to put my second half in. I am fifteen years old.

And the list. The list is what I have been wanting to put down on paper for about a month, and the list is what I want to give to you today, because the list is the inventory of every cheap chicken dinner I have taught myself to cook in the past year, and because anybody else trying to feed a household on what feels like nothing might want this list too.

Here are the dinners on the list, in order of cost-per-serving. Most expensive at the top, cheapest at the bottom. The numbers are what each meal cost the last time I made it. The notes in parentheses are how I keep myself going.

Grandma Carol’s chicken spaghetti casserole. $9.40 total, four servings. ($2.35 per serving. Most expensive on the list. Save it for a Saturday when something needs to be celebrated.)

Sheet pan chicken with mushrooms, lemon, and herbs. $4.80 total, two servings. ($2.40 per serving. The recipe Mrs. Rivera would call elevated.)

Sheet pan chicken stir-fry. $5.40 total, three servings. ($1.80 per serving. Mama’s Mother’s Day dinner.)

Salsa verde chicken cheese enchiladas. $4.62 total, three servings plus leftovers. ($1.54 per serving. The Tuesday-after-tornado dinner.)

Easy sheet pan dinner with chicken thighs, potatoes, and broccoli. $5.20 total, three or four servings. ($1.30 per serving. The recipe I taught Mama.)

Slow-cooked chicken thighs with rice. $4.50 total, four servings. ($1.13 per serving. The markdown rack standby.)

Chicken and dumplings, my version. $5.50 total, four to five servings. ($1.10-$1.38 per serving. The recipe I made for Cody the night he didn’t come home.)

Chicken leg quarters baked over rice with cream of mushroom. $4.20 total, four to five servings. ($0.84-$1.05 per serving. The single cheapest piece-of-real-meat dinner I know how to make. The chicken fat drips down into the rice while it cooks. The whole pan smells like a Sunday at Grandma Carol’s house even when it is a Tuesday at mine.)

Chicken and rice soup from leftovers. $1.80 total, three or four servings. ($0.45-$0.60 per serving. The recipe that turns yesterday’s carcass into tomorrow’s lunch.)

I want to add commentary to the list, because the list without the commentary is just numbers, and the commentary is the part that took me a year to learn. Chicken thighs are the cheapest cut of real chicken at every grocery store I have ever shopped at, every week, without fail. The markdown rack at Walmart is on the back wall of the meat department, and the markdowns happen Sunday nights and Wednesday mornings. The chicken leg quarters at Aldi go for sixty-nine cents a pound on a normal week. A whole chicken at $4.99 will, if you are willing to do the work, give you a roast, a soup, a sandwich-meat lunch, and a stock for next week’s casserole. That is the math. That is the list.

I am writing all of this down because I have decided the list is part of what I want my notebook to be. Not just stories, not just the cost columns, not just the recipes I tape into the front. A working list, in the back, of the dinners I know I can make, and what they cost, and the day I made each one. The list grows a little every week. The list is, increasingly, the way I am building my life.

My shift starts in three hours. I am wearing the polo. I am walking to the Sonic at ten-thirty. The list is in the green notebook with the cloth spine. Everything else is going to be what it’s going to be. But the list is mine.

The recipe below is the kind of comprehensive chicken dinner roundup that magazines run when they want to publish a piece every reader will save. I am keeping mine in my notebook by hand, in pencil, with the cost per serving in the margin and a star next to the ones I have made. If you are starting a list of your own, this is a good place to start it. Pick three. Make one this week. Make a second one the week after. Star the ones that worked. By the end of the summer, you will have a list of your own, in your own handwriting, in a notebook that is yours, and a working girl who is fifteen years old in Oklahoma is telling you that is the kind of inheritance nobody can take away.

King Ranch Chicken Casserole

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 40 minutes | Total Time: 55 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

• 3 cups cooked shredded chicken (rotisserie works great)
• 10 small corn tortillas, torn into rough pieces
• 1 can (10.5 oz) cream of chicken soup
• 1 can (10 oz) Rotel diced tomatoes and green chiles, undrained
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1/2 cup chicken broth
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 2 cups shredded cheddar or Mexican blend cheese, divided
• Cooking spray

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven. Heat your oven to 350°F. Spray a 9x13-inch baking dish with cooking spray and set aside.
2. Make the sauce. In a large bowl, stir together the cream of chicken soup, Rotel (with juices), sour cream, chicken broth, chili powder, garlic powder, cumin, onion powder, and black pepper until combined.
3. Add the chicken. Fold the shredded chicken into the sauce mixture until evenly coated.
4. Layer the casserole. Spread half the torn tortilla pieces across the bottom of the prepared dish. Spoon half the chicken mixture over the tortillas and spread evenly. Sprinkle with 3/4 cup of the cheese. Repeat with the remaining tortillas, remaining chicken mixture, and another 3/4 cup of cheese.
5. Top and bake. Sprinkle the remaining 1/2 cup of cheese over the top. Cover loosely with foil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the foil and bake another 10 minutes until the cheese is bubbly and lightly golden at the edges.
6. Rest and serve. Let the casserole sit for 5 minutes before cutting. Serve straight from the pan.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 410 | Protein: 31g | Fat: 18g | Carbs: 29g | Fiber: 2g | Sodium: 820mg