Y’all, I’m about to have a baby.  I mean, not this very moment, but in the nearish future.  And that’s got me thinkin’, naturally, about food.  Because pretty much every major event around here constitutes another fantastic reason to drag out the cookbooks and recipe files and various food-related magazines and figure out the answer to my life’s biggest question.

What’s for dinner?

A few days after I delivered my firstborn little lovey back in 2004, a fellow mother from my church appeared as an angel on my front stoop bearing a lovely dinner.  A disposable pan of scrumptious chicken puffs, a bagged salad, and a little container of rice.  And I was delighted.  But when she also pulled out another disposable pan that held four MORE chicken puffs, packaged for the freezer?  That’s when broke down in hormonally-induced grateful tears.  Because havin’ a meal for the night was a serious stroke of good fortune for this frazzled new Mama, but havin’ the main course of a second dinner tucked away in my freezer for later? That, my friends, made me feel RICH BEYOND COMPARE.

These little chicken puffs take almost no time to whip up, they’re tasty and simple enough to please kids but delicious and filling enough to satisfy adults, and they freeze beautifully and cook-up in almost no time, with even less effort, so they’re perfect for families busy adjusting to newborns, caring for sick or recuperating patients, or even grieving families.

Of course, they’re also quite good to pull out of your own freezer on just a normal Tuesday night, as well.

Easy Chicken Puffs

2 cups cooked, diced chicken (I usually grill or cook extra chicken sometime when I’m already making it for a family meal and then make a batch of puffs in the next couple of days.)

8 oz. cream cheese, at room temperature (I use the herb and chive flavored cream cheese, because it is NUMMY in the puffs, but you could use plain as well.)

1 tube of 8 refrigerated bake-and-serve crescent rolls

1/4  cup diced onion

1 Tbsp. olive or vegetable oil

4 Tbsp. seasoned dry bread crumbs

4 tsp. butter

Preparation:

Slowly cook onion in oil on stovetop, allowing it to caramelize slightly.  Stir onion and cream cheese into diced chicken.  Carefully remove roll dough from tube and divide into 4 portions of 2 triangles each.  Pat connecting seams of each pair of rolls together and stretch lightly to form 4 squares of dough.  Place 1/2 cup of chicken mixture in the center of each square, then gently pull corners up around chicken and pinch all seams together so they’re sealed tightly.

Freezing for later use:

Place four little chicken puffs seam-side down on a tray that has been lightly oiled or covered with parchment.  Place tray in freezer and allow puffs to freeze solid, then remove from tray and store in a tightly sealed container or plastic freezer bag.

Baking:

Allow puffs to thaw.  Preheat oven to temperature specified on the roll packaging and bake for 15 minute or until dough is cooked but not yet browned.  Remove from oven and place one teaspoon butter on each puff, then top the butter with a tablespoon of breadcrumbs.  Return puffs to the oven for remainder of cooking time – 5 or 10 minutes.

(If you’re delivering puffs to a family for dinner, write the baking instructions on a little card for them and take the puffs unbaked or frozen along with a small bag or container of breadcrumbs.  And plan to take along an easy side dish or two and a really tasty dessert, too.)

We’ve discovered these are also quite yummy served with a little jarred chicken gravy or  cream of chicken soup thinned with some milk, as well.

Enjoy!