 In the CVC Southern kitchen, today we're going to be making a recipe that Mama always made out of this church cookbook. A lot of the women at church made it, it is Vegal Casserole. We're going to get started. This is a large recipe. I have to it, but I will list the full recipe for you guys at the bottom of the description post. So we're going to start out just mixing everything up together. This is one of the easiest casserole's we'll ever make. You don't even have to bowl noodles first. So you're going to take a, I am using a large can of Vegal. And I'm going to drain it, put it in our bowl to mix. We're going to drain our water chestnuts. This is a whole can of water chestnuts. I'm only going to be using about half of these. I may actually use a little more, we'll just have extra ones in an hour's. And I'll chop them up a little bit in a minute. We're going to use an onion and it calls for a large onion. So I'm just using some pieces of onion that I already had in the refrigerator. I think I'm going to go ahead and do a little bit more since it calls for a large onion. That means I want a good bit of onion in it. Handy dandy scraper, miss the days when my kids were little. I remember a cartoon that they said handy dandy on all the time. It's funny how you remember stuff like that and you never forget it. Get stuck in your head. Now they're off to college. There's no more handy dandy cartoons. We're going to chop these up a little bit on the chopping board. Let's just add a little crunch to the casserole. Makes it good. Water chestnuts. I remember my momma making this. Now some people just make it with veggies and that's all. And it's like their side. We're putting chicken in hours tonight so it's going to be a meal. You're going to use a can of cream of chicken. I had cream of mushroom. I used what I got. I had a large can but I didn't want to waste it. All right, we're going to use a half cup of mayonnaise. There's a quarter. Anything but that much mayonnaise, it's bound to be good. And there's a half. And I can use the same one because I've got sour cream that you squeeze out. And we're going to use a half cup of sour cream. And you're going to see this is still going to be plenty of food for me and Chris. More than enough. So if you make this full recipe, you better be ready to feed a lot of people. I think I would keep it to the half like I'm doing. I had a bunch of kids before I was taking it to potluck. I'm going to rest my hands off and we're going to grab this chicken out here. I cooked the chicken today. I just simmered two chicken breasts and a little bit of water with some bullion in it and some salt and pepper so it would have some flavor. So we're going to add this to our, I think I'm going to mix this up first. Get it good and mixed up then we'll add the chicken. I'm going to add a little pepper to it right quick. At least a half. There is no reason to add salt when you've got that much mayonnaise in there. And I put salt in the meat already. We're not going to salt this. But now you can taste it if you want to and add salt. But mayonnaise is usually really salty. A lot more than you think. So now we're going to put in our chicken. This is just cooked chicken. You're going to cook it long enough that it's shredded like this so that it's good in the casserole. We get those chicken breasts on sale. Boy, you get a lot of meat. You can make a lot of meals off of that tray chicken. I think that's enough chicken. I don't want to put so much chicken in it that is overpowering the vegetables. That's how you're eating. So you can use your judgment when you add your stuff in. All right, we're going to get it in the casserole. I think this casserole is about two and a half quart. This white one cleans up real easy. I really like it. It's a LaCruzette. I guess, is that how you say it? LaCruzette. It's a LaCruzette. Chris says, you know, I'm Southern. I just call it the way I think it looks failed. I'll say it funny. All right, here we go. There's our casserole. Now you can use regular crackers if that's all you got. I crush them, put them in a bowl and then I pour some butter over them, just melt it, toss it and put it on the casserole or you can just put them on the casserole and pour your butter over the top. But you need to butter your crackers from the beef. You know, it tastes good. These are Ritz, they're already buttered. So you don't have to fool with all that stuff and nothing's better than a Ritz casserole. So just use the sleeve of Ritz crackers and remember that this would be twice as big if you make the recipe that's listed. So you can half it if you want to like me and Chris did. All right, it's gonna go in the oven. I'm gonna bake this because it's pretty thick. I'm gonna bake it for 30 minutes, minimum. All right, the oven's preheated to 350 degrees. We're gonna bake it 30 minutes. Now you can go relax. Transfer it to my toaster oven. So it got a little bit brown on the top. But we're hungry. I really did it. Ritz casserole, just like mom and greenie made. Dip me out some of this, smells good. Get me some tea, y'all. I'm just sitting here thinking, I know y'all say, why don't you put some cheese in it? But it's got all that fattening mayonnaise in it. And so it's plenty rich, okay? Look at all that chicken, veggies. It's a one pot meal. You can make sides and have it with something. But me and Chris are just having this for supper. It's good. It really has a crunch from the water chestnuts and the onions really good and powerfully strong. It's really good. Simple Southern casserole's, just like mama made. Now the onions are crunchy too. So if you want your onions to be soft, you better saute them. Y'all have a great day. And thanks for watching Collard Valley Cooks, where we cook like mama did.