I don’t know what it is about cold, blustery days that puts me in the mood for comfort food. I’m a huge Mac and cheese person. Every time I go to Noodles & Co. I get the Wisconsin Mac and Cheese! Yumm! My husband always thinks I’m crazy with my love for Mac & Cheese, but he loves this next recipe too!

My favorite part about a plain old box of Mac and Cheese is you can doctor it up however you want. Here’s how I do it in my kitchen!

Doctored Up Mac & Cheee
Ingredients:
1 box of Mac & Cheese
3 strips bacon, cooked & crumbled
2-3 chicken breasts, cooked and cubed (or a can of chicken, flaked works too!)
1 can petite diced tomatoes, drained (or a fresh tomato, diced)
4oz. cream cheese
About 2 tbs. size chunks of velveeta, cubed.
Garlic
Paprika

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Prepare Mac and Cheese according to box directions. During this time fry bacon and chicken if not already cooked.

Prepare a casserole dish (I use a medium sized round corningware baking dish) by spraying the bottom and sides with cooking spray.

Add prepared Mac & Cheese to baking dish.

Mix in tomatoes, chicken and bacon.
Next, add garlic and paprika to taste. (I don’t measure here so it depends on how much you like garlic. I typically use a few shakes of Tastefully Simple’s Garlic Garlic) Stir the mixture.

Next, add the velveeta chunks around the dish and add the cream cheese right in the middle. No need to stir.
If you want, you can sprinkle some cheddar or Colby jack cheese on top.

Place dish in oven for about 20 minutes at 375 degrees.

Remove from oven, stir so the cream cheese and velveeta is mixed in and serve!

So do you doctor up your Mac and cheese? What ingredients do you include? I’m starting to think a can of the tomatoes and chilis would give it a lot of flavor! Enjoy!

-Sara

The weather has been quite miserable here in Minnesota. I think we’ve maybe had 1 day without rain in the past month. It has been cold, wet, rainy and just plain disgusting. I’m ready for sunshine, flip-flops and to be done planting! Our fields are really wet…so wet we’ve had to switch some to soybeans. I’m all about comfort food during crappy weather so I searched Pinterest for recipes and found one for this Cheesy Chicken Bacon Hotdish. Cooking Pinterest recipes is part of my 101 in 1001 challenge so here’s my latest!

The finished product

Cheesy Chicken Bacon Hotdish

2 cans cream of chicken

5-6 chicken breasts, cubed

7 strips of bacon, cooked & crumbled

1 box of spiral noodles

2 cups of shredded cheese (any flavor your prefer)

garlic powder

salt & pepper

Most of the ingredients for Cheesy Chicken Bacon Hotdish

Fry bacon in pan. While bacon is frying, put on pot of water to boil for noodles. (I cooked the entire package of bacon and just put the rest in the fridge after for sandwiches and salads.)

The chicken is from the store. The bacon is our farm raised pork!

While bacon is frying, cut and cube chicken breasts. Once bacon is done, set aside. Fry the chicken in the bacon grease. While chicken is cooking, boil the spiral noodles. Add garlic powder, salt and pepper to taste to the chicken.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

Drain noodles and return to pot. Add the 2 cans of cream of chicken. Add in 1 cup of shredded cheese (I used Colby Jack.) I also didn’t measure here! The more cheese the better in my opinion.

Spray a 9×13 baking dish with non-stick cooking spray. Fill baking dish with the mixture from the pot. Crumble the bacon over the top and cover with remaining 1 cup of cheese. Again, I didn’t measure the cheese :)

Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.

Wala…Cheesy Chicken Bacon Hotdish!

Now this was husband approved for the recipe book so you know its good. But even better, my momma, my hardest critic, said it was one of the best hotdishes she has had in a long time! Success!

I had it for lunch today, reheated, and it was delicious the second time around.

You could speed the recipe up by using pre-cooked bacon and pre-cooked chicken. Cooking both of those took up the most time in this recipe. It was a definite winner though and will be part of my comfort food recipe box :)

-Sara