Of cabbages and kings, frittatas and casseroles

Dinner at this house one night recently was a frittata fail. I’ve never made a frittata, but it’s just a crustless quiche, right? And it’s a popular dish now. I happened on to a recipe for a vegetable frittata and thought I’d use it as a guide. How hard could it be? Of course I had to adapt it—Christian and Jacob want meat with their meals (although not much red meat for Jacob) and the recipe had bell pepper, which doesn’t like me and I don’t like it. Jordan pointed out that we had a lb. of pork sausage in the freezer, and I have found that Christian will eat finely chopped spinach stirred into soup or something. Substitute cheddar for Parmesan and there was my frittata. Only I was way off on proportion of my substitutions. Instead of a half lb. of sausage, I used the whole lb., about 8 oz. spinach, and 6 oz. cheese. Stirred in 7 eggs—and it looked like a meat and spinach mixture. The eggs got lost. I dutifully baked and served it. Christian, with a skeptical look: “I’m used to more egg in a frittata.” It tasted okay—actually the flavor was good, but it was kind of like hash.

If frittatas are in vogue, casseroles are not. Facebook every once in a while pictures a casserole with the line, “Do people still eat this?” I often find myself defending tuna casserole (see last week's blog post). Somehow that makes me even more interested in retro foods. I associate casseroles with my childhood and then with the lean years when I was the single parent of four teenagers, but those are good memories. (I used to make gorilla casserole—the heading said you could feed ten gorillas at twelve cents apiece or something like that.) I still make casseroles. Here’s one I served to a guest recently:

Baked chicken salad casserole

3 c. chopped chicken

3 hard-boiled eggs

2 cans cream of mushroom soup

½ Tbsp. lemon juice

¼ c. mayonnaise

1 tsp. salt

2 c. chopped celery

½ tsp. black pepper

2 green onions, chopped fine

           Layer chicken and eggs in greased casserole; mix remaining ingredients and pour over eggs and chicken. Top with crushed potato chips. Bake at 375^o for about 30 minutes or until heated through. Enjoy!