"Ritzy" Chicken

I made up the name. Really. No, really!

This is a recipe (I use that word lightly) that mom used to make with potato chips (so late 60's early 70's!) but I think I improved it dramatically as a missionary in Japan using Ritz Crackers. Hence, the clever name! (Actually, we couldn't get sour cream so we used unsweetened yogurt, but why do that when you can have a dollop of Daisy?) This is not a healthy recipe, which is probably what makes it so delicious. It's best to cook it on a Silpat so you can get all the crispy bits off easily to eat before you serve the actual pieces if chicken to your guests.

It used to be you only had a big bone-in chicken breast at the grocery stores. But now, with chicken tenders, the meat to breading ratio is much better. So,

1) Get as many packages of chicken tenders as you are going to want to bread and cook
2) enough Sour Cream (too much is OK too, just don't eat the left-overs after coating the chicken-open the other one for that!)
3) Ritz crackers - one box should do it

Crush the crackers in a large zip lock bag and spread on a plate

Pour the sour cream in a bowl and mix in any seasoning you favor (onion salt, garlic salt, seasoned pepper, Lawrey's salt, hmmm, or "nothin' at all" (Ned Flanders to Homer Simpson on the ski slope...anybody...?)*. Sour Cream is a stand-alone food. I prefer it by the spoon-full).

Cover the chicken tender with your sour cream then gently coat with the cracker crumbs. You might need to press more onto the chicken once it's on the cookie sheet if you see any bald spots.

Then you cook it at the standard chicken temperature which is think is also standard cookie temperature...350? For around...30 minutes? You'll know when they're done. About 5 minutes before smoke starts coming out of the crack in the oven door. They should be dark golden brown. Don't worry about undercooking the chicken. The tenders are so skinny they're probably done before the crust is brown!

Good Luck!

*I'm not sure what parenthesis within a parenthesis etiquette is so I just did it that way. Please straighten me out before I embarrass myself in my new Trilogy I'm writing about witches who love blood-sucking werewolves but have to live on Mars where men cannot go because they cannot feel gravity but the witches can go anywhere because they are magic so they go to a school on a mountain where all the greek goddess trained for their power but nobody did very well in school because it was an all girl school and they all missed the boys, I mean blood-sucking werewolves, so they flew to earth but they hadn't learned the secret of the greek goddesses for broom flying (they didn't yet realize the greek goddesses never did that) so instead of going to Earth (where the boys, I mean, blood-sucking werewolves lived) they went through a black worm hole and ended up in a land where everything was really really big and they were really really small so the witch magic they had learned so far was very very weak (like baby Tylenol for a migraine)...

So, that's as far as I've gotten. But I think it's going to be good. I'm going to have Tina Fey be the main witch. And probably Tracy Morgan for the boy, I mean blood-sucking werewolf. (I really like 30 Rock)