Another public service announcement

Reject any recipe that contains an ingredient your Loved One hates, no matter how little of that ingredient is used.

The End.

Ok, not really.

A few days ago I found a casserole recipe that looked wonderful. It had chicken, cheese, and bacon, all wrapped in pastry and shaped in to a beautiful ring. I decided I needed to add this new dish to my arsenal immediately.

Unfortunately, I did not have any of the ingredients in my kitchen, so I went out and bought a few boneless, skinless chicken breasts to create my "two cups of chopped chicken". I always have several varieties of cheese in my fridge, but never cheddar, so I bought a big bag of pre-grated cheese to speed things up. I don't usually have bacon so I bought a bag of precooked, pre-crumbled stuff. And pastry? That's why God gave us Pillsbury.

By the end of my quick trip to the store for these, and a few other, ingredients, I had spent almost $25.00.

On a casserole.

Once back home, I began assembling it. The dish also called for pimento....I left that out because I find it loathsome so it was gone. It also called for a half cup of diced onion, something Husbandly One and I adore, but my Stepson can't stomach, so I left that out, too. It also called for a quarter cup or Miracle Whip.

Now. Husbandly One hates the stuff with a passion, but I I figured a mere quarter cup of the stuff, combined with two cups chicken, one and a half cups of cheese, a half cup of bacon, the remaining ingredients that made the cut, plus all that pastry , would make it simply an innocuous binding agent.

Wrong.

I don't know what kind of molecular power Miracle Whip has, but it should be studied in the highest centres of learning in the land. After all that money spent, and all the time to put it together, what I served Husbandly One was simply a very pretty piece of Miracle Whip Pie. The taste of salad dressing** was so strong that even I couldn't eat more than a few bites of it.

So, note to other would-be-cooks: When in doubt of a recipe, as it relates to your Loved One's preferences, WALK AWAY.




** When I was young, and would read "Salad Dressing" on the Miracle Whip bottle, I was always horrified to think that some people would actually scoop a big dollop of it on to a bed of lettuce and tomatoes. It was only once I was 30 that I realized it referred to things like chicken salad or tuna salad.