Best of both worlds

One of Eric's favorites is chicken and rice.  Every week I buy a chicken from Whole Foods.  I had some leftover and thought that it would be good to use it before we left for our trip to Vegas.  I decided to make chicken and rice but not like everyday chicken and rice.  I wanted to steer away from the cream of chicken/mushroom soups.  We also try to cut down our carb intake so I substituted quinoa for rice.  I also had some veggies laying around the house so I added those to the dish.  In the end, my "chicken and rice" ended up more like chicken and quinoa pot pie minus the crust.  

The ingredients were:

quinoa

chicken stock

flour

salt

pepper

onions

peas

mushrooms

carrots

chicken

butter

milk

thyme

So to start, I premade the quinoa in chicken stock.  While that was cooking, I started on the veggies and the sauce.  

I heated up some olive oil and added the onions to the pan and let them cook for a couple of minutes.  I'm not sure what's going on with my pics but for some reason I can't rotate them so they're gonna be horizontal today =/

Next, I added the carrots and let those cook for a bit with the onions

After the carrots, the mushrooms were thrown in and also allowed to cook for a bit, and finally the peas were added and heated through. 

These were removed and set aside into a bowl with the quinoa 

In the quinoa pot, I melted the butter.  Once melted, I added the flour and thyme and let that cook together, stirring consistently. 

Once it was all incorporated, I added milk and chicken stock to the mix and whisked until thickened a bit. 

Once the sauce thickened, I added everything together including the chicken, and mixed it together and put it in a baking dish. 

The casserole was topped with parmesan and breadcrumbs with dallops of butter throughout. 

I let this bake for about 25 minutes and then it was done!

The best thing about casseroles, I think, is that it's a whole meal in one pan.  

This is such a hearty meal without having tons of calories.  It's great to remove the sodium added from the cream of chicken soup and it tasted great.  It was so easy and took no time at all to make.  I wish it had been a little cooler last night but it didn't keep the meal from being good.  It definitely tasted more like chicken pot pie than chicken and rice but it was still good either way.