Emily's Chicken Surprise

Thanksgiving will be upon us in a few short days, and in exactly one week the star of this blog, Emily of "Cooking with Emily" will be 11.  She is growing up far too quickly, but I am very proud of the young woman she is becoming.  There is not much more a parent can hope for at the end of it all but that you get to see your children grew up to be good people.  I can honestly say this, for me, is true of all my children.  I guess somehow I did some things right.
It has been a pretty quiet week.  Monday I made baked Parmesan chicken so we would have leftover chicken for Emily to make some version of her favourite chicken pot pie (which is a bit of a misnomer, since there is not a scrap of pastry involved but is a casserole I make with leftover chicken) In any case this week's version became a further take off on my casserole with nod to her other favourite, shepherd's pie.
She diced the leftover chicken, putting it in a casserole dish with the leftover carrots, to which I added frozen peas and frozen corn.  While she sauteed an onion (which she tried to do with out adding any butter or oil!) she made packet of chicken gravy as I had not made gravy the previous night.  Incidentally cream of chicken or mushroom soup would work here too.
Once the onion was tender she stirred that into the chicken and vegetables, then poured the gravy over everything.  We had mashed potatoes left over too, so Emily spooned them over the casserole, but then topped the potatoes with a prepared package of stuffing mix.  She baked the casserole for about 20 minutes, but it probably could have gone 30 or 45, as the potatoes took a long time to heat through, and were not completely hot on my plate.
In any case dinner was a success, and there were no complaints when it reappeared for supper last night, making a final run as a school lunch today.