Recipe: Tatertot Casserole (Sans Canned Cream Soup!!!)

Ah, dear memories of my grade school cafeteria lunches.  My favorite meals were (HUGE) homemade cinnamon rolls with chili (notice what's listed first there...), cheeseburger stromboli,  and... tatertot casserole!  Such a humble casserole, really.  Comfort food at its finest.

Fast forward to now.  A few weeks ago I had a craving for tatertot casserole, the creamy, beefy goodness topped with crunchy tatertots.  But one thing stood in the way... canned cream of mushroom soup.  Over the years I've developed a mild distaste for canned cream soups--chock full of sodium and they keep the shape of the can when you dump them out (a non-Newtonian fluid, by the way).

I tried buying "Lite" soup and making a casserole, but it was bland.  No amount of additional salt or pepper could salvage it.  I was quite disappointed.

Luckily (for my tummy), I didn't give up.  Tonight, I set out to make my own "cream soup" sauce for casserole.  No half-pint gelatin salt-block "soup" was going to stand in my way!!!

Guess what!  This time I was successful.  As full of flavor as comfort food gets, and both Handsome and I had extra helpings!

Tatertot Casserole
by the Spares

1 lb. ground beef
2 1/2 c. frozen green beans
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
3 T. butter
3 T. flour
1 c. beef broth*
1/8 t. dried thyme
1/8 t. black pepper
3/4 c. milk
1/4 c. parmesan cheese (optional)
1 lb. frozen tatertots (1/2 of a 32 oz. bag)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Spray an 8x8 baking dish with nonstick spray (or a deep-dish 9" pie pan).

Brown ground beef in a large skillet.  Drain and pour beef in baking dish.  Spread the (still frozen) green beans over the ground beef in the baking dish and set aside.

Melt butter in the skillet you used earlier.  Saute onions until translucent, about 2 minutes.  Stir in flour and cook for 5 more minutes, stirring often.  Add broth, milk and spices.  Heat to a low boil and cook until thickened, stirring often.

Pour sauce over beef and green beans in the baking dish.  Top with parmesan cheese (if using) and spread tater tots on top in one even layer.

Bake for 20-30 minutes, until tatertots are brown and sauce is bubbling.  Let cool 10 minutes before serving.  Enjoy!!!

*You could replace part of the broth with wine, if you like.  This would work great if you used low-sodium broth, because wine helps food taste salty (without the added salt).

Farmer's Market: Fennel (Plus Heirloom Tomatos & Okra)

Fennel is a whitish bulb with long, light-green stems and feathery leaves.  I cut the stems off before I remembered to take a photo, but here's what my bulb looked like.

Raw fennel is crisp with a spicy, black licorice taste.  When cooked, it (supposedly) loses the harshness and takes on a soft nutty flavor.  After some research, I chose Rachel Ray's Good Fennels Pasta, because she hadn't let me down before!

As I was cooking, I uttered the famous last words, "I hope this is good... because this recipe is making a LOT!"

Turns out that I must have done something wrong.  It wasn't very good.  Salvageable, but not good.  Not enough sauce and the fennel wasn't soft like the onions and peppers were...  I added an extra two cups of tomato sauce and some parmesan cheese and baked it for 30 minutes, which helped, but it was still a crunchy-licoricely-studded fennel minefield.

In the end, I've learned that there are only a few foods that I will pick off of my plate:  blueberries, blue cheese, and now... fennel.  (And, believe me, I have been picking and picking during lunch this week... ah, leftovers.)

I'm not done, though.  Maybe next year I'll get up the courage to try it again...

On the bright side, the next night we had hamburgers topped with a thick slice of an heirloom tomato (in place of ketchup, for me).  They were delicous!  I ate the rest of the tomato with some salt and pepper!

We also bought a pound of okra, and I fried it to go with the hamburgers.  I adapted Paula Deen's recipe, but it turned out to be a little bland for us.  Nothing salt couldn't fix, though!

Day 27

(Full list.)

A Picture of You and a Family Member

Since I miss this little guy and he didn't make it into the last post...

My fireball of a nephew, Justice!

Isn't he cute?

Day 26

(Full list.)

A Picture of Something that Means a Lot to You

Parents who loved me and encouraged creativity and curiosity...

A mother who loved me enough to give me away...

And a new family that raised my soul mate "in the way he should go"*...

* Proverbs 22:6

Farmer's Market: Shallots

My favorite vegetable is onions.  Hands down.  They are so versatile: salsa, soups, sandwiches, salads, casseroles, omelettes, cake... well, maybe not cake.  Anyway, I thank my mother for my love of onions.  She's Italian, and she cooks like it (minus the garlic)... there's onion and green pepper in most of the family recipes, and, growing up, we always had those two veggies on hand.

Last Saturday, I ventured alone to the farmer's market.  It shouldn't surprise you that I bought a box of small yellow onions.  We've already used three or four of them!  I also bought a close cousin of the beloved onion: shallots.  They are small (thumb-sized), garlic shaped onions.

I bought a small carton of shallots for my next farmer's market cooking adventure.  After some research, I decided upon Ina Garten's (Barefoot Contessa) recipe for Carmelized Shallots.

First step, peel off the papery skin!

See how they have little "cloves" like garlic?  They're also juicy and layered like an onion.  And, boy, do they smell like onion.  My eyes were watering by the end of the stack, and my eyes hardly ever water when I chop onions!

Next step, brown!

Is that butter?  Oh yes, and sugar, too.  We're carmelizing these suckers.  Yum-o!

Cook until they look like this, shaking the pan every once in a while:

Magic, I tell you, magic.

You'll then add Red Wine Vinegar, salt and pepper, and cook until soft.  (I skipped the oven, and just put a lid on the pot--it was 100 degrees today, and my little apartment heats up fast!)

I couldn't get the colors right in this picture (the lighting in my kitchen isn't set up for photography, imagine that), but you can see that they are getting soft and the sauce is thick and coating the shallots.

In the end, you'll get something quite delicious.  Try not to salivate when you look at the photo...

I served this with the easiest chicken ever (recipe below--makes it very tender and moist) and zucchini and squash casserole.  Handsome and I ate the shallots with the chicken, and it was delicious!!!  I would definitely make this again, and look forward to trying out more recipes with this dear cousin of my favorite veggie!

Crockpot Chicken

from my friend Suzanne

Chicken Breasts

Chicken Broth

Put raw chicken breasts in crock pot.  Pour over chicken broth to cover chicken.  (I used 3 chicken breasts and 2 c. broth in my small crock pot.)  Cover and cook on low 7-8 hours.