Simply Mother

I received a compliment from Sariah tonight:

“Mom, that’s four nights in a row of good dinners!”

Coming from a six-year-old, this is very encouraging.

Especially my six-year-old, who, by the way, was never picky, AT ALL, for about the first four years of her life — seriously, the girl would eat chips with chunky salsa, raw red onions, every kind of vegetable, including squash — everything.

But something switched in her around her fourth birthday and the list of things she does not like has grown steadily since then. It’s so strange to me, I mean, I guess taste buds can change, but this is a bit extreme. To go from happily gnawing on a bit of pungent raw onion to positively gagging when tasting a smidgen of very bland spaghetti squash? It is genuine though, she’s not just being difficult (as I am sometimes wont to assume, I don’t know why, it’s never the case with her).

Anyway, I have hopes that she will outgrow the pickiness. She is already willing to try things that look gross, or that she hasn’t liked in the past. We aren’t pushy about any of it — I think I wrote about our approach somewhere … (Here.) — but she’s old enough that we can reason with her candidly without making her feel pressured (and thus resistant).

But the real reason for this post is to record this delightful time we had the other night after I randomly threw ingredients together to come up with what apparently was a rather impressive broccoli chicken cheese casserole.

Everyone was remarking about how good it was, and then Sariah declared she wanted to have it the next night too. And then the night after that. And the night after that. Then Matt joined in and said maybe we could have it for breakfast too, just pour milk over it. And put it between two slices of bread for lunch.

Eventually someone said we would never eat anything else — even if we went to a restaurant, we would order broccoli chicken cheese casserole, and then Sariah chimed in and said, “But they wouldn’t know how to make it as yummy as Mom, so we would just have to bring our own.”

Before the conversation was over, we had advanced to bathing in it and brushing our teeth with it and washing our hair with it (but then Sariah said we would just cut off our hair and IT would BE our hair) and then Jane said we would DRIVE with it and I think I may have mentioned we could use it as a pillow to sleep on, and it was an all around jolly time at the dinner table, with kids absolutely hysterical with throw-back-your-head-laughter.

So anyway, in case you want to try this at your house, here’s the approximate recipe for this delicious, giggle-inducing dish:

Broccoli Chicken Cheese Casserole

2 C cooked chicken (we used the remainder of one of those roasted ones from Sam’s Club, so it had the extra flavorful dark meat in it too.)
1/2 package cream cheese, softened (put it in the microwave for a minute or so if you’re short on time, which I always am when I need softened cream cheese)
1/3 C butter, mostly melted (just throw it in the bowl when you microwave the cream cheese)
1/2 C sour cream
3 heads broccoli, steamed
2 C sharp cheddar, shredded.
1 1/2 C crushed croutons (or you could use seasoned bread crumbs)
1/2 C butter, melted

Mix chicken, cream cheese, sour cream, butter, and broccoli into a casserole dish. Cover with shredded cheddar cheese. Sprinkle crushed croutons on top. Pour melted butter over croutons. Bake at 350 for, oh, about 15-20 minutes or until it starts to smell like you need to take it out of the oven.

Filed in: cuteness • parenting • recipes | January 6, 2010