Cooking With Ricochet: How To Make Lazy Chicken And Vegetable Pasta Bake

Serves about 4 depending on how ravenous your guests are.

Ingredients
1 can of condensed chicken and corn soup
500 g of penne
1/2 a barbecued chicken
1 zucchini
1 carrot
1 1/2 cups of grated tasty cheese

Steps

1. Decide you can't be bothered cooking, opt to have toast for dinner.
2. Remember your parents are coming over, give up and pull out a lazy recipe instead.
3. Preheat the oven to 200 °C*.
   
4. Put the 500 g of dried penne on to cook for about 10 minutes in a pot of boiling water, with a bit of salt. Probably too much. Damn. Drain it and put it aside.
   
5. Grate the zucchini and the carrot, congratulating yourself for not grating your fingers off whilst your parents sit on your couch and flick channels on your TV.
6. Shred the barbecued chicken, carefully not eating any of it before you put it in the bowl.
7. Mix the soup, zucchini, carrot, shredded chicken and penne together and pour them into a baking dish. Accidentally drip a bit on the cat who then runs away and hides under the bed and refuses to come out so you can clean him off. Give up as the other cat runs in and starts enthusiastically cleaning soup and chicken off the first cat for you.
8. Sprinkle the cheese on top of the pasta and bung it into the oven for about 20 minutes.
9. Put on your oven mitts, pull out the baking dish.
10. Decide the pasta bake may be cooked but will be more delicious if you grill the cheese a bit.
11. Take off your oven mitts to turn the grill on.
12. Blithely pick up the baking dish, turn around to put it under the grill.
13. Something's burning.
14. IT'S YOUR FINGERTIPS, YOU IDIOT!
15. Manage somehow to dump the piping hot straight-out-of-the-oven baking dish onto the cooking range instead of the floor.
16. Ask your Mum to put the baking dish under the grill whilst you hold your fingertips under cold running water, reminding her first of the importance of oven mitts.
17. Serve up the deliciously golden brown cheesy, chicken and vegetable pasta bake with some salad.
18. Keep swapping hands between eating duties and a cold pack during the meal.
19. Two days later notice that you miraculously don't have any lasting damage, blisters or any indication apart from a callous on one fingertip that you almost burned your stupid fingerprints off.
20. Cancel planned crime spree.
    

*That's about 390 °F