Bad Casserole

We didn't go grocery shopping last week and by yesterday, we were out of nearly everything.  Saturday, I'd made an entire bag of red kidney beans (we like beans -- I should do a post of everything you can do with a giant batch of beans), but all that was left by Tuesday was bean and tomato broth with a few scraps of bean, corn, and tomato.  I roasted a butternut squash (and let Baby!Crafter feed himself some -- he loved it!) and a few cloves of garlic.  I blended everything up and threw it in a casserole dish with some salt, chopped celery, brown rice, buckwheat, marjoram, sage, and olive oil.  I baked it.



I'm not going to lie, this was a bad casserole.  Mediocre, at best.  But bad casseroles can be saved.  I made béchamel sauce (unsweetened soy milk + equal parts flour and margarine scroll down for the recipe and some variations) with parsley.  The béchamel sauce turned out really well and when I drowned the casserole in it, the casserole wasn't too bad.  Toddler!Crafter really liked it -- he is not a picky eater by any means, but I don't think he would have gone for the bad casserole without the béchamel -- and was running all around saying "béchamel" over and over.  My husband said the casserole was "not bad" (believe me, he would have said it was bad if he thought it was).

This morning, there was a little leftover casserole and no béchamel, so I put some marinara sauce on it.  The casserole was actually pretty good that way!  

The moral of the story is rather than serving something that tastes like cardboard box (or worse), jazz it up with some sauce!

On the upside, my Fiesta Casserole (inspired by the latest episode of Nigella Kitchen) was a big hit!