Recipe disaster

Richard and I enjoy trying to make new meals. Although we are not the best cooks, we do try and that's what matters the most. We decided to try something (we thought) would be easy: Cheesy Chicken and Rice Casserole, found here:
http://www.campbellskitchen.com/recipes/recipedetails?recipeid=27173

We made the casserole like the recipe said, except we cut the chicken up, instead of using whole pieces.

It does have to cook for quite a while, so we started this casserole early in the evening, good thing we did because it ended up cooking for 2 and 1/2 hours, and was still runny and the rice uncooked.

After the first hour of cooking, Richard took the foil off and used our electric thermometer (one of the best utensils in the kitchen!) to check the chickens internal temp, which was no where near done.

We put the dish back in with oven (this time without foil) to cook. Every 30 minutes we checked the chicken and the consistence. After another hour, the chicken was done but the dish was still runny and the nice hard. We added more cheese (so healthy!) and crackers to help soak up the soup.

About 15 more minutes in the oven and we had had it. We were frustrated and hungry by this point. I'm still not sure where we went wrong. It tasted "ok", Richard actually liked it better the second day at work.

So that was our adventure with trying something new and "simple", maybe next time we'll have better luck!