Chicken Stuffing Bake

Friday, March 13, 2020. My last day at Hodge Elementary.

I woke up at three-thirty. Not because the alarm went off — because my body knows this is the last time. I made coffee in the dark kitchen. I put on my uniform — the white kitchen coat, the apron, the comfortable shoes that have carried me across that cafeteria floor for 12,775 days. I drove to school in the pre-dawn and I parked in my spot and I sat in the car for five minutes and I let the morning come.

The party was at lunch. Mrs. Patterson had decorated the cafeteria with streamers and balloons and a banner that said "Thank You Miss Dot — 35 Years." The children were there — all four hundred of them, and they sang a song. They sang a song they'd been practicing, about a lunch lady who loved them, and the lyrics rhymed poorly and the melody was uncertain and it was the most beautiful music I have ever heard in my life.

Three former students came back. Derek came. Derek, the chef from Charleston, in his chef's whites, standing in my cafeteria. He brought a photo of us together from fifteen years ago — him at eight years old, me at forty-nine, both of us in the kitchen. He gave a speech. He said, "This woman didn't just feed me. She saved me. She saw that I was hungry in ways that had nothing to do with food, and she filled me up." I held it together. Barely.

Two others came: Shonda, who's now a teacher in Atlanta, and Marcus (not my grandson — a different Marcus), who's an EMT in Savannah. They both said the same thing, in different words: "Your kitchen was the safest place in my childhood." Safe. My kitchen was safe. That's not something they teach you in food service training. That's something you build with love and extra portions and the refusal to let a child leave the line hungry.

Sheila gave me a framed photo of the kitchen staff. Signed on the back by everyone who's worked with me over thirty-five years. Some of the names are from people who've passed. Some are from people who moved away. All of them fed children alongside me. All of them mattered.

I walked to my car at the end of the day. I sat in the driver's seat. And I sobbed. Twenty minutes of the kind of crying that comes from the gut, from the deepest place, from the part of you that knows something sacred just ended. Thirty-five years. Twelve million, eight hundred thousand lunches. And it's over.

Now go on and feed somebody.

After thirty-five years, the recipe that kept coming back — the one the children asked for by name, the one I made in batches of a hundred servings and could assemble half-asleep — was always some version of this Chicken Stuffing Bake. It’s not fancy. It doesn’t need to be. What it is, is warm and filling and reliable, and in a school cafeteria, those three things are everything. Derek, Shonda, Marcus — they all ate this. I’m certain of it. Now I make it in a single pan, just for me, and it still tastes like purpose.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 45 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour | Servings: 6

Ingredients

2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cooked and shredded
1 can (10.5 oz) condensed cream of chicken soup
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup chicken broth
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 package (6 oz) seasoned stuffing mix (such as Stove Top)
1/3 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 cup frozen peas, thawed (optional)

Instructions

Preheat oven. Heat your oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a 9x13-inch baking dish with nonstick spray.
Make the chicken layer. In a large bowl, stir together the shredded chicken, cream of chicken soup, sour cream, chicken broth, garlic powder, onion powder, and black pepper until evenly combined. Fold in the peas if using. Spread the mixture in an even layer across the bottom of the prepared baking dish.
Prepare the stuffing topping. In a separate bowl, combine the dry stuffing mix with the melted butter and toss until the stuffing is well coated. Sprinkle the buttered stuffing evenly over the chicken layer.
Bake. Place the dish uncovered in the preheated oven and bake for 40—45 minutes, until the stuffing topping is golden brown and the filling is bubbling around the edges.
Rest and serve. Remove from the oven and let the casserole rest for 5 minutes before serving. Scoop generously — this is not the kind of dish where you hold back.

Nutrition (per serving)

Chicken Stuffing Bake — The Casserole That Fed a Generation