You will never guess what I did...

This week I did the unthinkable.

I made a casserole.

Yes. You read that correctly. I made a casserole.

I know. CRAZY. A little unbelievable and completely unlike me. Go ahead. Say it. So if you are in the dark right now, here is a little history about me. I HATE casseroles. I started cooking when I was very young simply because I didn't want my mom to make another casserole ever EVER again. She said that if I cooked the meal, I could choose not to make a casserole. So I started cooking. A lot. And I discovered I LOVE cooking, and never ever EVER cooked a casserole. I also avoided eating one whenever possible. And the best part is that my mom stopped making casseroles as well since we found much tastier concoctions to sup on.

So, how did I come to actually cook one? The infamous Betty Crocker tricked me. She tricked me! First of all, it was called Chicken Tetrazzini. Second of all, the picture looked fabulous! Third, I had all of the ingredients. And fourth, there was nothing in the recipe about sprinkling breakfast cereal on the top of it or dumping in a gelatinous mass of cream of mushroom soup.

I only started realizing I may have been tricked when the recipe told me to mix all the contents together and pour into a casserole dish for baking. And when Eric came sniffing into the kitchen, peeked in the oven and gleefully exclaimed, "YOU MADE A CASSEROLE???!!!!!!!!!!!!"

I smiled sheepishly. I thought I had given into the MAN of American cooking.

But while I ate the said casserole with Eric and our friends Dan and Eric M. (all of whom had several helpings), I realized that not all casseroles are from the devil. (Just most of them.) After all, I managed to make Chicken Tetrazzini WITHOUT a can of soup and breakfast cereal and even altered the recipe (no surprise there) to add fresh spinach, mozzarella cheese, roasted garlic, and crushed red pepper flakes.

And (here's the kicker) I LIKED it!

Now realize that I am still not a fan of casseroles. (And I am also not a fan of Betty Crocker's trickiness.) But when I can make it all from scratch with fresh ingredients, the meal becomes much more than just a casserole. It becomes a baked work of art. And I'm pretty sure I can handle that.