Chicken Tortilla Chip Casserole

Experimented with some ingredients in the fridge yesterday and made an extremely tasty meal, you should try it.

• 3-4 Chicken Breasts – Shredded
• One large Onion (white or sweet, not red) – Sliced
• 1 Tbsp Butter
• Cooking Sherry
• ½ cup Roasted Red Pepper – Sliced (sub green chile or jalapeno if spicier is desired)
• 1 can Cream of Mushroom
• 8 oz Sour cream (more or less as desired)
• Cheddar Cheese – Package Shredded (½ cup in Casserole, rest for topping)
• 8 oz White Corn Tortilla Chips – To Thicken (more or less as desired) (Substitute other chips or tortilla if desired)
  

Preheat oven to 375.

Add splash of Sherry to medium covered pot on stove. Add chicken to pot, cook covered until chicken is fully cooked. Shred chicken (I use a food processor, but fork is fine). Return chicken to pot.

While Chicken is cooking:
Add butter and splash of Sherry to medium sauce pan. Heat to medium high. Add Onion. Saute on medium high until onions are limp and turning slightly brown. Mix in Red Pepper and continue saute until peppers are hot. Add Cream of Mushroom and Sour Cream and mix with onion and red pepper. Heat over medium heat (do not scald).

Pour Onion mixture into pot over the shredded chicken and combine. Fold in ½ cup cheddar cheese. Fold in tortilla chips (the chips will break and get smaller as you fold them in, they will get soft as they soak in juices). Pour combination into 9x9 casserole dish, top with cheddar cheese.

Bake at 375 until cheese is browning (as desired) – approximately 10-15 minutes. Allow to stand 10 minutes before serving. Feeds 4-6 depending on portion size.

Anchorage Day 3

Day three saw the return of clouds with the added bonus of rain. Temperatures at sea level peaked in the mid 40's. Luckily I happened to be in position when Mt. McKinley showed up on the horizon. Even from ~200 miles away you can see its bulk. Its the one on the right if you're wondering.

Here is a picture of the storm that rolled in. You probably can't see it, but the mountains in the background have no snow on them. When we arrived only the very tallest peaks had ice and snow. The ones nearest to anchorage were bare to the top.
here is a picture from the next day. As you can see it snowed fairly heavily. The locals said that that snow would not melt until next summer.

Anchorage Day 2

Weather was great again, so drove to Seward, south of Anchorage. It is the Northern most port in North America that does not ice over in the winter. Here I am standing by the fjord.

And a random Jellyfish.
I sampled four of the five meats in this sign. Reindeer was amazing, fresh Crab Legs were awesome, Buffalo (actually Bison) was very good, Caribou was pretty good. Didn't have a chance to try the Musk Ox, but no big deal for me. I also tried a Moose burger. Moose was a little different, very lean, personally I would rather have the reindeer or bison. Alaska also had great fish. The fresh Halibut was really good, though I can't tell the difference between it and flounder. The Salmon was actually out of season, so all of it was frozen, but it was still good.

Anchorage Day 1

The trip down to Anchorage was a bit disappointing. I tried to drive from Fairbanks to Anchorage, a trip that would have taken me by Denali National Park and Mount McKinley (highest point in North America). Unfortunately the rental car companies in Fairbanks would not allow me to pick up there and drop off in Anchorage. The day of the flight the fog and clouds shrouded the mountains and there was nothing to see out the windows.

The first full day in Anchorage was a bit different however. The weather decided to cooperate and I was able to take a drive into the mountains. It is pretty impressive to see 15,000 foot mountains spring out of Fjords carved by glaciers 20,000 years ago.

There were glacial rivers everywhere. They cut deep valleys with steep cliffs. The water was a beautiful green in the rivers. By the time it hit the fjords it was an earthy brown.
The glacial lakes were amazing. The water was crystal clear and calm, reflecting the mountains like a mirror.

Fairbanks Day 2

Fairbanks is still treating me good. Still cloudy, so no good long distance shots, but still some pretty awesome things to share. Below is a picture of me standing beside the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. Its pretty inspiring to stand next to a point that nearly 700 BILLION gallons of crude oil has passed. Maybe that does not impress many, but 700,000,000,000 has a lot of zeros.

Below is only a small section of the nearly 800 mile long, 4 feet in diameter pipeline (that's ~400 million gallons moving through the pipeline at any given time).

Even neater, below is a picture of the "Lady of the Lake", a B-29 from World War II that somehow ended up in a small pond near Eielson Air Force Base.

Geetings From Alaska

The Fairbanks area is amazingly beautiful. It was foggy this morning, so no great pictures yet. I did stop at North Pole, Alaska on the way back from work. I know Leslie would have killed me if I had not stopped and visited Santa's House.

Of course, they have two 50 foot high Santas:

And Reindeer:

And Handicapped Sleigh Drivers: