Food & Finances Friday--Casserole Surprise

After spending a couple weeks making many meals for families in need recently (I am not sure what hit so many families all at once, but it seemed like we knew a bunch who were dealing with something intense and needed a meal for their family), I have really grown to appreciate casseroles.

Casseroles can feed many people. They can also feed hungry, growing children a ton of food in one meal. (Sometimes I wonder just how does my 4-year old engulf so much food in one sitting.) Casseroles are flexible. I can substitute ingredients if I am missing something, and it doesn't ruin the dish. Casseroles are simple to assemble and easy to double. I can make one pan for a family in need and another pan for my own family, at the same time. I love the efficiency of being able to feed two families the same meal like that. It helps me serve others without detracting from the needs of my own family. Casseroles can be very inexpensive, which really helps a family on a budget.

After asking my friends for some of their favorite easy casserole dishes, I started to consider that there must be a formula for making a casserole. I think I might have it figured out. A basic casserole appears to have a handful of standard ingredients:

• a pasta source

• a sauce source

• a meat source (unless it is a vegetarian dish)

• a vegetable source

• an additional splash of flavor

• an additional liquid to blend it all together and keep it from drying out in the oven

• a topping

It is a simple formula. Yet, I have successfully messed it up! I realize that I am proudly to the point of being able to follow a recipe and cook nice meals for my family. But, I am NOT ready to be experimenting in the kitchen....just yet. I've still got a learning curve there.

After successfully following a simple broccoli and chicken casserole recipe four times, I decided to tweak it one night. I had some BBQ shredded chicken that was not a hit, because the BBQ sauce was too wild for our family. I did not want to waste all that chicken by throwing it out. So, I thought it would be smart to use the BBQ chicken up in a casserole, hoping that the casserole would tame it a bit. I was a little too ambitious to substitute items from the original casserole. The final product did not look anything like the ones I had made before. I used the BBQ chicken instead of regular chicken, and did not add mustard, because the BBQ sauce had enough of a flavor kick. I used spaghetti pasta instead of the rotini pasta. I used green beans instead of broccoli.

My new casserole concoction was certainly not as pretty. My family was a good sport about it though. They asked what it was. When I shared what was in it, my husband laughed. He was highly entertained by my attempt to use up the chicken with the yucky BBQ sauce. The casserole was not too bad. The boys in the family liked it enough to clear their plates. The 2-year old was very vocal with her opinion that it did NOT taste good. Since I don't plan to use that BBQ sauce anymore, I don't plan to repeat that particular casserole ever again.