Let Me See Your Casserole

I'll just say this up front -- I'm not ashamed to be cheesy. When I came up with the title for this post, I was thinking of this early 90s classic. I'm not so good at booty dancing, but I am good at throwing together a bunch of ingredients in a Pyrex dish, topping them with cheese, and baking them for 30-45 minutes. Simply put, I love casseroles.*

So, despite the increasing June temperatures, it should come as no surprise that I made a casserole last Sunday. I made a variation on a spinach-rice caserole recipe that's in a Better Homes & Gardens vegetarian cookbook that my mom gave me. (It's probably as old as that rap video. I'm pretty sure it's the only vegetarian cookbook my mother has ever owned.)

Anyway, I used this kale from Karen's garden instead of spinach. Kale is definitely on its way out for the season, leaving these greens pretty bitter. Hence, the caserole was the best way to make them tasty.

The recipe also called for 8 oz. of tofu, and I used locally-made, non-GMO tofu from a little company called White Mountain. I know some people get weirded out by tofu, and I'm sure this picture will do it, with the bumps on the side. But trust me, if you're gonna go with tofu, this is the stuff to use:

I also used some of the marinara sauce, previously seen on the spaghetti squash. The final product was hot, cheesy, and delicious, the way a casserole should be. Unfortunately, it was hard to get a good plated shot of it, but you get the idea here:

*Over the years, I have had a number of roommates of South Asian decent, who have mothers who make amazing, non-casserole food.  When my roommate from grad school met another former roommate, she asked her about my casserole habit. It was pretty funny.

Not So Lazy in the Kitchen

Food would be the one thing that would get me to revive this sucker.

My latest hobby is cooking with seasonal, locally grown fruits and veggies. I've had a few Facebook and Twitter updates featuring some mighty tasty dinners, and those have all garnered some interest. I figured I needed to do more than social media, but there's a thousand cooking blogs out there. I know I won't have the next Smitten Kitchen.

Bu for the few friends who are interested, I thought this might be the best place to give some updates. As soon as I have the library job of my dreams, this little experiment in eating locally will probably go the wayside of my many other blogging endeavors. In the mean time, here is a crappy phone photo of the dinner that started it all:

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I call them "Breakfast Tomatoes," and these were almost entirely local to Central Texas, with kale and eggs from neighbors and goat feta from Pure Luck Dairy in Dripping Springs, Texas. The tomatoes most likely came from a hothouse in West Texas. Recipe courtesy of NPR's Kitchen Window.