After nearly two months without a post, I have finally, FINALLY made something that I have not already featured on this website. What can I say? I’m a creature of habit… I make the same few meals over and over again. And, since it’s just me, these meals feed me for several days. It’s really easy to go long stretches of time without making anything new at all. Especially when I go through phases where the most effort I put into a meal is turning on the oven.

Yesterday though I made chicken salad, which I had not only never featured on this site, I’ve never made it myself before! I use my mom’s chicken salad recipe because it’s incredibly simple, and the best chicken salad I’ve ever had.

Here’s what you need.

Boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Crushed Pineapple. Pecan Pieces. Miracle Whip. I suppose you could use regular mayonnaise, but I can’t promise it will be as delicious without the tangy zip of Miracle Whip. (No, I don’t get any money from the lovely folks at Kraft, but maybe they should pay me for my constant pushing of Miracle Whip.)

First you need to boil your chicken… no pictures of this step. The best thing about chicken salad is that you can make as much or as little as you’d like. You could make just one or two chicken breasts, or you could make the whole package. I pulled out about 5 pieces of chicken. Two were pretty big, and one was really small. I thought about cooking my whole bag of chicken, since I knew I’d have to share. But since I’ve never made chicken salad before, I decided not to… if I made that much and it didn’t turn out well for some reason, I’d have been heartbroken.

After the chicken has cooked all the way through, you’ll want to shred it. You can wait for it to cool and pull it apart with your fingers, or you can be like me and use two forks to pull it apart while it is still hot.

Put the shredded chicken in a large bowl. Lament again that all you have are white bowls, and your camera doesn’t like white bowls. (I have a blue bowl, but my blue bowl does not have a lid.)

As you can see, those are not the pecan halves from the ingredient picture… I ran them through the food processor. I added a big handful of pecans, a couple good sized spoonfuls of Miracle Whip, and a big spoonful of crushed pineapple. No exact measurements, you have to just see as you go. And if you know me at all, you know how much that drives me crazy. I ask my mom for exact measurements on EVERYTHING. That’s part of why you see more baked goods on here than other cooking– baking is precisely measured, just the way I like it.

A note about the pineapple, don’t strain it.. you don’t necessarily want to just pour it in there, but you want some of the juice. In the end I think I ended up putting just a touch more pineapple and a little more miracle whip in the bowl.

This is what the chicken salad looks like when it’s done. Mmmm… I don’t know if it looks appetizing to you or not, but it does to me because I know how delicious it is. You should be able to tell from the picture that there’s enough to get pineapple and pecans in each bite, and the chicken is well coated in the miracle whip… you don’t want dry chicken salad!

At this point, I stuck it in the fridge for awhile since I’d mixed it up when the chicken was still warm, and I wanted to let the flavors sit together for a bit.

It’s good on bread, but the BEST way to serve this chicken salad is on a croissant. Yum! I’m glad I packed some for my lunch today because I’m drooling now!

I have actually been meaning to make and post about dump cake for some time now. I finally got around to making it yesterday, and naturally I waited long enough that Pioneer Woman posted about it a little while back. That’ll teach me to procrastinate. Yeah, right. Sure it will. LOL It doesn’t matter anyways… this dump cake was the first thing I’ve made in a really long time that I haven’t already posted about, and I sure as heck wasn’t going to let that stop me from posting it now!

I invited Mom and Harold over for lunch yesterday because I was making Chili Mac, and I wanted their help eating it (and to send them home with most of the leftovers). I also wanted to make something for dessert. It had to be easy, and something I hadn’t posted about before. So dump cake it was.

Super simple, no mixing bowl required! You need a box of yellow cake mix, a can of cherry pie filling, a can of crushed pineapple, and anywhere between 1 and 2 sticks of margarine or butter depending on which recipe you follow.

In a 13×9 inch pan…

DUMP one can of cherry pie filling.

On top of that DUMP one can of crushed pineapple.

You can leave it in layers, or mix them up for good measure like I did.

On top of that, DUMP your package of dry cake mix. (Is the somewhat unappealing name of this dessert making sense yet? :)) To make it easy, I snipped off one corner of the bag and poured it on top that way. Then I used a fork to spread the mix a little more evenly.

Slice up your butter or margarine, however much you decided to use, and distribute it evenly on top. Then you get to slide it into the oven and bake it at 350 degrees for about an hour. You’re just waiting for the cake mix on top to become all golden brown.

Or you can be like me and accidentally cook it a little TOO long because you were stubbornly waiting for that one patch in the middle to be the same color as the rest of it. Ah well, we served it up still warm with some vanilla ice cream on top and it was delicious!

(This picture is a perfect example of why I wish my kitchen had better lighting!)

Okay, guys, it’s time for the results!! I put all the entries into the random.org integer generator to choose a winner. 1-315 corresponded with the comments, and 315 and up went to the extra entries.

Random.org chooses entry number 27… that’s a comment, so I searched through my comments to find the one labeled 27, and that corresponds with the following comment.

Email and IP address blocked out for privacy.

Congratulations, Pam! I’ll be contacting you for your mailing address. If I don’t hear from her within 48 hours, I’ll choose another winner. Thank you for entering everyone! If you’ve got recipes to share, I’d love to see them!