Some creamy chicken and pasta stuff

So like I said yesterday, I wanted to try this recipe for cabbage soup, but a combination of practicality and actually wanting to make something people in this house will eat made me change my mind.  I still wanted soup, so I decided on chicken tortilla soup.

At no point am I going to argue that I make sense.  That ship has sailed.  But I feel better about myself when I make my own broth for soup.  I feel...resourceful.  Nurturing.  And it seems like the resulting soup will taste better.  I don't need the meat from a whole chicken to make soup, and boiling a whole chicken is a pain in the ass, so enter the rotisserie chicken.

No. I didn't come up with this shortcut.  I'm just embracing it, like I've embraced gray hair and my questionable status as a Good Person.  And I think it's a service to my soon-to-be-growing readership to share that one rotisserie chicken represents a two step, two meal process.  Night One, you take one half of the chicken and make A Thing.  The next day, remove the remaining chicken and boil the fuck out of the carcass for broth.  

Today, obviously, is Night One.  I needed a recipe that used chicken and sounded like something that we would all eat.  And that wasn't Mexican Chicken Casserole, because that's what I did last time and repetition can feel unimaginative.  Something creamy with pasta.  I googled and came up with this: Creamy Chicken and Asparagus Pasta.

There won't be any asparagus going into this, and I won't be browning the chicken because I'm using already cooked chicken.  So basically it's more about the idea and the rotisserie chicken. 

This is what the stove looked like when I was ready to get started.  The leftover macaroni and cheese is from lunch (I tricked Tyler into making it himself.) The red soup pot is clean but I don't have a good place for it so it sits on the stove all the time.  The casserole dish sticking out of it is my mom's.  She sent it home with me on Thanksgiving with leftover mac and cheese in it and I just dumped it out and cleaned it today.  That seemed like a good place to keep it.  There's still bacon grease in the cast iron skillet from the bacon I made earlier.  So as promised, I had to do some cleaning up before I could start dinner.  

Look at that lovingly cared-for cast iron skillet!  I don't have any counter space so the magic is happening on the stove.  Please note that you should make sure all the burners are turned off before you start prepping like this.  I picked the chicken off of half the bird and stuffed the rest back into the chicken bag for tomorrow.

Next, I moved the action over to the top of the portable dishwasher so I could peel and chop the garlic.  Using fresh garlic is another thing that makes me feel like a successful cooker of things.  Like I'm in the know.  I must be, because I know how to pound on the side of the knife to pop open the garlic peel.  

The recipe called for chicken to be browned, but since I was skipping that part, I just put the garlic in the middle of the skillet with a little olive oil and topped it with the seasonings.  I stirred it around in a little spot for a bit before moving on to the next step.

I threw in the chicken broth and cream.  I had to use part of a can of chicken broth because, you know, I haven't made broth yet.  The cream has been in the fridge for a while but the expiration date hasn't been reached yet so I assume it's fine.  These things are unclear to me.  

I also added in some "freshly grated parmesan cheese."  What this really was is a handful of cheese from a 

container that I had leftover.  The top was broken a little so the cheese may have been a little dried out.  I also didn't measure it but it didn't look like very much.  Then I had to add a little milk because Jess said it was too thick.

To the left you have the final product.  I sprinkled it with a little extra red pepper before eating it.  It's still a little on the thick side, but is genuinely tasty.  I recommend trying the recipe that I linked to, and even trying to follow the directions.  It's probably actually really good.