As the cool air settled over San Diego on election night, all I wanted to do was curl up on the couch and watch the results come in. However, my belly and my husband still wanted to eat dinner. It seemed like the perfect night for some comfort food – our old household favorite Chicken Divan. The recipe I learned from my Aunt combines rice, chicken, and broccoli, with a cheesy, cream-of-soupy sauce. Top it all with herb seasoned dry stuffing mix and you get a tasty meal, hot from the oven, filled with homey goodness.

The original sauce consists of 2 cans of condensed cream of chicken soup, 1 cup of mayonnaise, ½ cup of water or chicken broth, and 1 ½ cups of grated sharp cheddar cheese. Since the processed ingredients no longer fit with my new health and wellness outlook, I realized I would have to make some alterations. I couldn’t stomach the idea of Campbell’s Cream of Chicken Soup whose ingredient list consists of Chicken Stock, Chicken Fat, Modified Food Starch, Wheat Flour, Cooked Chicken Meat, Cream Milk, Salt, Water, Cooked Mechanically Separated Chicken, Margarine, Corn Oil, Cottonseed Oil, Canola Oil, Soybean Oil, Water, Beta Carotene for Color, and less than 1% each of Dried Whey, Soy Protein Concentrate, Monosodium Glutamate, Yeast Extract, Flavoring Less, Vegetable Oil Less, Soy Protein Isolate, Sodium Phosphates, Chicken Flavor, Chicken Stock, Chicken Powder, Chicken Fat, Chicken Flavor, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Partially Hydrogenated Cottonseed Oil and Butter.

I could easily buy organic cheese, I had plenty of my own frozen chicken broth cubes on hand, and I had already experimented with homemade mayo, but I had no idea how to replace condensed soup. For people who know how to cook from scratch the answer is probably so obvious that you are shouting at your computer screen in disgust right now, but as someone who grew up eating soup from cans and packets, I was stumped. Having unsuccessfully scoured my cookbook collection, I turned to the Internet in search of casserole recipes. While most, like mine, called for canned “cream of” soups, I did find a few casserole-from-scratch recipes from which I could draw inspiration. It seems the mysterious ingredients that had seemed so illusive were nothing more than chicken broth, flour, and cream. I was dumbfounded. At nearly 30 years of age, it had never occurred to me that the secret to “cream of” soups was cream.

It was definitely an epiphany for me. To make the switch from processed to unprocessed foods, all I needed to do was read my labels and look for the real ingredients. The answer had been right in front of me all along, and I had been too overwhelmed to see it clearly. Campbell’s Soup is really made of Chicken Stock, Wheat Flour, Chicken Meat, Cream, and Salt, with added fats, flavoring agents, stabilizers etc… a much less mysterious concoction.

I put away my recipes and set about gathering the real ingredients that would go into my Chicken Divan. Free-Range Chicken Breast, Frozen Organic Broccoli Florets and Eco-farmed Rice. California Olive Oil, a Free-Range Egg Yolk, Salt and Vinegar for the Mayonnaise. Homemade Chicken Broth, Organic Butter, Organic Wheat Flour, Organic Cream from happy California Cows, Salt and Pepper for the sauce. Organic Sharp Cheddar Cheese and Whole Wheat Panko Breadcrumbs. All real foods, from companies I trust. It may take me a few tries to get the proportions and seasonings just right, but I can feel good knowing that even my “mistakes” are worth eating.