Last night's comfort food

With all that's been going on: losing my job, looking for new work, rearranging the house to squeeze in stuff I kept at the office, I craved comfort last night and also needed to cook from the pantry and freezer as I'm a little short of cash.
I remembered a dish my mom or Grandma used to make: a rice casserole made with that ubiquitous can of cream of mushroom soup. I couldn't just dump a can on some rice; I have my reputation after all, so I made a few embellishments with which my husband and I were very happy.
For protein, I pulled two skinless, boneless chicken breasts out of the freezer, defrosted them and cut them into small pieces (chicken breast tends to swell when cooked, and if you don't cut the pieces small, you'll have bigger-than-bite chunks; on the other hand, you have to be sure to cook them quickly, or via a moist-head method, or they'll get dry and stringy).
I plucked some parsley from the garden — about enough to make a quarter cup, minced; and finely chopped half an onion. I had a half box of mushrooms and cut those into slices.
I measured 1 1/2 cups long grain rice (this dish gets too mushy with short- or medium-grain rice).
First, I sauteed the chicken until it was quite brown and crusty, in a blend of butter and vegetable oil. You could use oil spray to save calories but watch the chicken carefully so it doesn't burn.
I dumped this into a bowl, then sauteed the onions, parsley and mushrooms until quite well browned and dumped these in with the chicken.
I then sauteed the uncooked rice until it was golden and flecked with brown, kind of a tweedy look. Dumped that in.
Finally, I added to the bowl 1 1/2 cups cream of mushroom soup, 1 1 /2 cups chicken broth (you could use water), a sprinkling of pepper (you don't need any extra salt) and snipped some thyme leaves from the plant I bought last week at the KCC Farmers Market and stirred those in.
All these went into a shallow oil-sprayed casserole dish. I recommend a shallow dish because the top then browns and gets slightly crusty and it's 'ono. You can use a 7-by-11 Pyrex dish or I have a set of graduated oval Emile Henry dishes that I just love and I used the middle-size one for this.
Bake an hour at 350 (peek and taste after 25 minutes to see if it needs more moisture). With a salad of watercress leaves, tomatoes and cucumbers topped with Kai's Hawaiian Spice and Seasoning Rub and an oil and balsamic vinaigrette, this made an oh-so-comforting supper. It'll be lunch for both of us again today!
Forgive the lack of a photo: a) it's not very photogenic, kind of brown on brown, and b) my camera is telling me the recording chip is locked and I can't figure out how to unlock it.
Word to the wise: If you buy a piece of equipment at second hand, be sure you get the instruction manual!
Happy cooking.
See you SATURDAY (not Sunday as I previously said), 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the new Hawaii Kai Farmers Market at Kaiser High School for a signing of my three cookbooks — and lots of locally grown produce and other good foodstuffs.