Great Aunt Lee's Chicken and Chip Casserole: Never Again.

This isn't the kind of recipe I usually gravitate toward, but I was looking for something easy to make for one of Melina's swim class nights (for some reason they only offer her class at 6:15 p.m.) and this sounded tasty and filling, if not exactly healthy. I think this is the first time I've ever actually made anything with cream of (anything) soup. If I keep up with my goal of cooking everything in this cookbook, it certainly won't be the last.

Great Aunt Lee's Chicken and Chip Casserole

• 2 cups cooked chicken (I used Trader Joe's precooked chicken)
• 1 cup diced celery
  
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
  
• 2 Tbsp minced onion
  
• 1/2 cup pimento-stuffed olives
  
• 3 hard cooked eggs, chopped
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
  
• 1/4 cup bottled French dressing (I used Thousand Island)
  
• 1 tsp lemon juice
  
• 1/2 tsp salt
  
• 1/4 tsp pepper
  
• 1 can condensed cream of chicken soup
  
• 2 cups crushed potato chips
  

Combine and bake for 20 minutes at 450.

Results

This was just... weird. With all due respect to Aunt Lee (who was really just doing her best with the recipes that that the 1960s provided, and who actually pushed the family's envelope a lot when it came to food), it is hard for me to imagine that this dish was ever considered appetizing. I was expecting all of the ingredients to come together to form a "more than the sum of its parts" whole, bound together the culinary glue of cream of chicken soup, mayonnaise and French dressing; but instead, it ended up being a random crunchy boiled stirfry with only a grayish brown gravy holding it in common. And let me say, hard boiled eggs and olives are just strange together. Honestly, it didn't taste that bad, and I had a few helpings, but after a few minute of looking at all the little chunks in the gray gravy, I just couldn't take it any more. The only good things about it were that a) it was pleasantly crunchy; b) it didn't taste too bad; c) it had a nice combination of vegetables and protein; and d) it gave us all a good laugh, and Jeff played a joke on Melina using it as a prop. Nuff said.

Score: For a blind person, 6; for a seeing person, 3.